The bottom line: exercise doesn't work.
Exercise is important for your health, but it does very little to help you lose weight. Don't just take my word for it. The National Institute of Health straight up says:
“It's not a weight loss tool.”
“I read more than sixty studies on this. And it turns out that exercise is pretty useless when it comes to weight loss.”
There's more detail in the Vox video above. But I think we all already know this intuitively. Exercising makes us hungry. And the number of calories you lose from exercise is very easily offset by a small amount of food. From that same video, here are some comparisons:
- one hour of running = a Big Mac + fries
- one hour of dancing = three glasses of red wine
- one donut = a half hour of cycling
Are you really going to exercise for two hours just to offset some McDonalds and a couple of donuts? Keep in mind — this is just to maintain pace. You'll need to hit it even harder to actually lose any weight.
I know I don't have time for that.
If I actually want to drop weight, I know that I can just follow one, simple rule: eat less. It's not easy, but it works.