The Secret Sauce of Exercise? Inefficiency! Yes, inefficiency.

Please, hear me out.

With time being a most precious resource and increasing demands from personal and professional life, modern life now offers different tools and gadgets promising to make our lives more efficient. Also, humans have become masters in multi-tasking (albeit some better than others). We therefore have learned to adapt to time constraints by increasing our efficiency in completing multiple tasks on our daily lists, with the purpose of saving time and energy.

INefficiency, as I am sure you would agree, expends energy. But you see, that is PRECISELY the goal when it comes to how we want to focus our exercise routines for the purpose of improving cardiorespiratory fitness and building lean muscle mass, both of which optimizes our metabolic health.

But what about weight loss? What if someone is exercising for the purpose of weight loss? A frustration that I commonly hear from my patients is that even with all the effort and focus they have put into exercising, the weight is not coming off as expected. And this is when I burst the ‘exercise for weight loss’ bubble.

Exercise is not very effective for weight loss and truthfully, its purpose should not be for weight loss. Now, this in no way means it should not be done - for exercise has multiple upon multiple benefits for health. It’s just not one of the main weight loss tools.

Do some people lose weight because they exercise? Of course. But it’s usually seen when someone who has otherwise been relatively inactive starts exercising or if someone switches their exercise modality from one to another. Human studies have shown that on average, the average weight loss a person can expect within a year of a consistent exercise routine is about 10-12 pounds. Obviously, 10-12 pounds is a big deal and also, for some, not as big a deal as they would like.

What exercise really helps with, especially when we are focusing on how and why it is beneficial for weight loss, is with keeping the weight off once someone has lost and or continues to lose weight.

Having a way to keep weight off is so important, since I am sure there are many who can attest to the significant feeling of defeat that settles in when we do something to lose weight, but then after some time, the weight just comes right back on. Some of that is due to unsustainable changes used to achieve that weight loss (like crash diets) that were guaranteed to not work from the beginning for sustainable weight loss. But also, it is due to lack of doing at least the minimum amount of exercise to help maintain the weight loss. Studies have shown that individuals who are able to maintain weight loss after one year are exercising, on average, for 60 minutes doing moderate physical activity. One hour. Every day.

But herein also lies a nuance to this. In order for exercise to help maintain weight loss, we need to make sure that we are burning as many calories as possible to maximize energy output. Because while calories in and calories out is not the whole equation when it comes to weight loss, it is still part of the equation. And maximizing calories out is achieved through inefficiency in exercise.

So how is this done? By changing up our exercise routine so that it is never expected and never easy and by not allowing our muscles to adapt to the same routine. If we start a new exercise routine, our muscles are not used to the type of movement and more energy is needed to go through the motions and to repair themselves after the workout. But if the same exercises are done each time you go exercise (I am going to go for a 45 minute walk today in the neighborhood), then after some time, the muscles can anticipate what the exercise will be and then conserve energy so that the amount of calories burned decreases with that exercise. However, by going on a bike ride sometimes, or adding in interval training to the walk, or adding in strength training on some of the exercise days, this all requires more energy to be used. And this is precisely the goal. This changing up of exercises, preventing our muscles from adapting to the exercises we are doing, is called inefficiency in exercise.

In addition, other ways to increase energy expenditure outside of planned exercise is through non-exercise activity thermogenesis, also known as N.E.A.T. Examples include walking to work or class, instead of riding a scooter or grocery shopping in the store, rather than online. Finding a way to increase movement in the day contributes to increasing energy expenditure and inefficiency in exercise.

Exercise is so important for health, but making sure you get the most out of your exercise will ensure that you continue to get the maximum benefit. Change up your routine, vary the intensity, and keep things inefficient!