‘Exercise has very little role in weight loss, long term studies show.’
Dr Tim Spector was on the Diary of a CEO podcast and he was one of my professors when I studied at King’s College London.
On this podcast, he made some very controversial statements that blew up the internet. One was about the role of exercise and weight loss.
He stated, “Exercise has very little role in weight loss, long term studies show.’
“The reason exercise doesn’t work, is if you go for a walk, you’ll get hungrier and therefore just eat more to regain the calories you’ve burnt.”
This is a crazy reason to stop training!
Below are the reasons you need to train to improve your health regardless of whether you change your diet.
Why you must train!
We all know smoking will reduce your life expectancy. Smokers vs non-smokers have a 40% increase in all cause mortality.
This means they have a 40% greater chance of dying at any point in time vs non smokers.
I’ve put these stats in to help you understand just how incredible exercise is at increasing your life expectancy and quality of life.
Weight training
People with low muscle mass have a 300% higher risk of all cause mortality
vs people with high muscle mass
Carrying higher amounts of muscle is a more powerful longevity tool than not smoking, bet you didn’t know that.
Therefore it is madness not to be resistance training to improve your health.
To lose weight you need to be in a calorie deficit. The problem with that is your body will burn muscle and fat at a similar rate so you end up lighter with the same body fat percentage i.e. skinny fat.
By weight training in a calorie deficit, you’re signalling to your body to hold onto muscle. This will leave you with a lean athletic physique by your body burning body fat in preference to muscle.
Cardiovascular fitness
Improving cardiorespiratory fitness has an even more profound effect on your longevity.
VO2max is a measure of cardiovascular fitness and going from the bottom 25% of the population of to between the 50th and 70th percentile for VO2 max there is a two fold reduction in all cause mortality.
When you go from the bottom 25% to the top 2% there is a 5 fold reduction in all cause mortality!
This is the single strongest association with a modifiable behaviour for increased life span.
Conclusion
As you can see even if exercise doesn’t make a difference to weight loss it has many extremely powerful health benefits.
To have a lean athletic physique you need to lift weights. Otherwise you’ll end up just skinny fat.
Weight training is also one of the most powerful tools for increasing longevity.
Cardiovascular training is the single best thing you can do to increase lifespan.
Tim Spector said that although exercise doesn’t help you lose weight it helps keep weight off.
No matter what your goal is even if you don’t change your diet, make sure you do some sort of resistance training and cardio.
