The calculation actually sounds quite simple: If you want to lose weight, you need a calorie deficit. Exercising burns a lot of calories. So all you have to do is increase your calorie consumption on the racetrack or in the gym, consuming more calories than you consume – and the needle on the scale will swing to the left.
But as is so often the case in life, it’s not that easy. Because scientific results draw a more differentiated picture when it comes to losing weight with sport. An overview.
Do I burn more calories with exercise?
Inexperienced people who have done little or no sport up to now significantly increase the calorie consumption at the start of their training and can thus burn some body fat at the beginning. In recent years, sports physicians and scientists have come to realize that a combination of strength training and endurance training apparently achieves the best results for weight loss in the long term. Strength training in particular has gained in importance in recent years, since muscles stimulate the metabolism and burn calories even when they are at rest.
However, scientists at City University in New York have found that the more you exercise, the more you exercise, the more you get used to it. This means that with the same training intensity, the body uses fewer calories than at the beginning of the training.
The difficult thing about calorie consumption
The research results of the scientist Herman Pontzer from Duke University in North Carolina also caused a stir. Pontzer studied the energy expenditure of the Hadza, an ethnic group in Tanzania who walk many kilometers a day – men up to 14 kilometers a day, more than the average American walks in a week.
Now it is reasonable to expect that the Hadza have a significantly higher calorie consumption than a person who works in an office every day. Using a special research method, Pontzer was able to determine the energy expenditure of the Hadza very precisely – and came to the surprising conclusion that the Hadza, despite their significantly higher level of physical activity, consume about the same amount of energy per day as inactive people in the United States or in Europe .
The researchers suspect that over time the human body adapts to the increased activity by using fewer calories for other, invisible tasks such as the immune system or stress reactions. “Instead of increasing the number of calories burned per day, the Hadza’s physical activity changed the way they burned their calories,” says Pontzer.
Lose weight with jogging – is that even possible?
After this result, the question naturally arises for most: If the body quickly gets used to the training effects, can one lose weight at all with sport, for example jogging? From a scientific point of view, the answer is: Yes, in principle, although the decisive factor in the long run is not running, but a conscious diet that does not consume too many calories at the end of the day. And a variation of the training plan can also help, for example new exercises or an increase in intensity.
The Ottobrunn-based sports physician Isabel Fechner definitely sees exercise as a useful component if you want to lose weight: “You can lose weight by running because you burn additional calories, but only if you don’t eat up the calories you burned up during exercise straight away takes.” Fechner recommends additional strength training for jogging, since more muscles increase the basal metabolic rate. Herman Pontzer also recommends exercise as part of a diet: “Physical exercise actually seems to help prevent weight loss.”
Strength training: an important part of losing weight
In addition to endurance sports such as jogging, swimming or cycling, muscle training in particular has proven to be an essential part of losing weight permanently. However, looking at the scales during strength training can be deceptive at first. Because if you build muscle, you will weigh more.
Fat burning can be boosted with weight training, but the muscles built up at the same time often do not result in a large weight reduction for the athlete, the pounds are simply distributed differently. A look at the waist may be the better indicator here – the weight is distributed to other parts of the body, such as the legs or upper body, while the actual problem area on the stomach becomes narrower.
And: Sport has a preventive effect on health. Strength training has a positive effect on both blood pressure and metabolism and reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes, among other things. However, this preventive protection only works if the muscles are regularly used.