Weight loss myth: MORE exercise does NOT always = more calories burned!
This WILL blow your mind when it comes to how you think about working out “to burn calories.” It certainly blew mine!
So please tune in if either:
You are working out more / harder but not seeing any results when it comes to weight loss, or
You’re religious about your workouts, strictly adhering to the same routines week over week but are totally stuck.
…Let’s talk about WHY that is.
(There are other factors too, but this is a HUGE one.)
I’m gonna drop some fascinating “science light” here to illustrate the point…
The "Constrained Total Energy Expenditure" model
There is a critical thing called the "Constrained Total Energy Expenditure" model, which says that while increasing physical activity can raise total energy expenditure (ie. calories and/or body fat burned) to a certain extent, the body eventually adapts by reducing energy spent on other processes, leading to a plateau in total energy expenditure despite further increases in activity.
Let’s break this down a second bc it’s SUPER important to understand, and I don’t want you slaving away at the gym with the potentially faulty idea that more exercise = more fat loss.
Most people tend to view exercise through the lens of the ‘additive’ energy model, meaning:
More exercise = more calories burned. Graphically, it would look something like this graph on the left:
Additive model (left): the more activity you do, the more calories you burn. The constrained model (right): As levels of physical activity increase, the body adjusts other aspects of energy expenditure to maintain total energy expenditure within a set range.
BUT!
In 2016, some scientists published a study (1) that put forth the ‘constrained’ energy model (on the right):
Energy expenditure does increase with added activity, but only to a point.
TRANSLATION: if you go from being sedentary to active, you’ll see an increase in energy expenditure.
HOWEVER, if you’re already very active and increase physical activity levels further, you aren’t going to see energy expenditure increase linearly because the body adjusts other processes to maintain total energy expenditure within a narrow range.
Let’s call this “compensation”, or adjustment to maintain constant energy output.
This compensation creates a plateau effect that limits the total contribution of exercise to daily energy expenditure, particularly with higher doses of physical activity.
Think of it like a household budget: If you start spending more on one category, like dining out, you might compensate by cutting back on entertainment or shopping to keep your overall spending consistent.
Similarly, when you increase exercise, your body may reduce energy used for other processes (like digestion or immune function) to maintain a stable total energy expenditure. This explains why highly active people may not see a linear increase in calories burned despite working out more.
Now, what can we infer from this?
There’s a lot to unpack here. But a few key points we can take away from all of this. But let’s go over the key takeaways:
1. Trying to ‘out-train’ excessive caloric consumption is a losing strategy
Not just because the amount of exercise required to achieve this is impossible for most people, but because the number of calories you think you burned during exercise isn’t how many calories you really burned due to the compensation that takes place - that’s the energy expenditure constraint.
So If you enjoy cardio, do it for the health benefits and stress relief, not to burn more calories.
The goal of training during a fat loss phase is always to maintain muscle and strength.
Of course, cardio can be implemented to increase the deficit, but be mindful of how much you’re doing so you don’t inadvertently end up in too big a deficit, which then increases fatigue and often cortisol, which means it backfires.
2. Your energy balance status (ie. the amount of calories you’ve eaten and/or the amount of body fat you have) likely impacts the degree of compensation.
I didn’t speak directly to this, but science also shows that people with higher energy reserves - meaning either higher body fat or more calories consumed through food - don’t experience the compensation effect as strongly (so they do burn more calories because they have more “in stock” to burn).
This means that if you’re at either maintenance or a surplus of energy, you could probably get away with a bit more physical activity without experiencing the same degree of compensation you would during a deficit.
In other words, if you’re in a calorie deficit because you're dieting or you’re working out fasted all the time, your body will compensate more strongly and you’ll burn fewer calories.
WILD right?!
And annoying if you’re someone who’s been dieting AND exercising thinking you’re doing yourself a solid in the fat loss department. The body is annoyingly smart!
On a related note:
The more exercise you do in the hopes you’ll ‘speed’ up fat loss, the more likely the compensation is to kick in. Hence why the goal of a fat loss diet is to coax (not force) fat loss.
(This is part of why I emphasize in my program that the weight loss we achieve together is slow and steady…but it is FOREVER weight loss because we aren’t forcing it. We’re leveraging sustainable approaches to metabolic optimization and hormone balance to achieve it! Very different than brute-force-sledge-hammer diet + exercise tactics.
3. Stop paying attention to your wearable device when it comes to calorie burn.
While this point isn’t directly related to the topic, I think it’s still worth mentioning. Wearables like smart watches and rings are terrible at accurately estimating energy expenditure.
And even if they were accurate, they wouldn’t be able to account for the compensation that occurs.
That said, wearables seem pretty accurate for tracking step counts, and you can use this to your advantage:
If you know how many steps you’re doing at the start of a period of fat loss, you can manipulate number of steps you take throughout to help track how you switch up your energy expenditure, making sure you hit your minimums day to day.
4. If you expend roughly the same amount of energy all the time doing the same workout routines week over week, you won’t see results.
Whether you’re a beginner or an elite athlete, your body adapts to that steady energy expenditure.
So, switch things up week over week to keep your body guessing.
Then on days when uplevel your activity, you can coax your body to burn more calories, more fat and give you the results you want.
…
Wrapping this up, I want to emphasize that physical activity is, of course, so important for weight loss. I’ve seen people misinterpret this idea to imply that physical activity is pointless…
But that isn’t what the constrained energy model suggests.
As I mentioned above, it states that physical activity does increase energy expenditure, but only up to a point.
It’s when physical activity becomes excessive or constant over time that the increase in energy expenditure plateaus.
It’s time we shift the focus away from using exercise as a way to burn calories and focus more on using it as a tool to build muscle: you WILL increase your calorie burn, and more importantly your blood sugar burn the more muscle you have.
You’ll also strengthen your bones, boost your immunity, feed your brain, have better circulation and skin, and much more. As the experts now love to say, “Muscle is the currency of longevity.”
And, putting aside all of the other obvious benefits of exercise, one of the biggest benefits of regular exercise is its role in weight maintenance: according to a recent systematic review (2) on the subject, it’s the “most consistent positive correlate of weight loss maintenance.” WOW!
Key Takeaways:
If you’ve been doing the same workout forever, switch it up!
Change up your energy expenditure all the time - day to day, week to week.
Do not work out fasted! Fuel yourself or your efforts won’t take you as far as you hoped. We’ve talked about other reasons for this before - here’s another one.
If you’re a woman in her late 30s - early 50s and want to learn how to support your metabolism, health, hormones and lose weight for good in your 40s and beyond, this blog and my social media are for you - they’re all about education, empowerment and getting you to your goals without dumb gimmicks or unsustainable practices that don’t work long-term.
If you want to go deeper and get my personal support along the way, my program, The Better Beyond 40 Formula might be ideal for you. 💃🏼
You’re not alone in this rollercoaster ride of hormonal changes. We got this. 🎢
