I was doing some reading and thought I would share a small snippet. I haven't seen this mentioned in here before.
Compensatory mechanisms
The human body is very “smart” and has a strong innate drive to keep us alive and to maintain the status quo. When we cut calories without exercising, our metabolism decreases, and proteins like leptin set off the drive to eat more.
Likewise, when we exercise at the same time as we cut calories, the metabolic efficiency of exercise often increases so that we burn fewer calories for the same amount of exercise.
Meanwhile, we also want to eat more – and, without even meaning to, we may reduce our non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).
For example, maybe after a long, tough workout you decide to go through the drive-thru instead of cooking. Even if you choose healthy food, it doesn’t take much energy to get it. Meanwhile, if you’re a 150 pound male, you could have burned roughly 136 calories by cooking for one hour (2). That may not sound like a lot, but if in addition to going to the drive-thru, you also let the kids walk the dog and the dishwasher wash the dishes, and then you drive to the corner for your mail instead of walking, the calorie-burn edge of your workout is completely lost.
As this example demonstrates, it’s tough to capture everything that goes into our energy balance equation and this presents a puzzle for researchers trying to understand the relationship between exercise and weight loss.
I have caught myself doing this more than I care to admit and it can really effect results. It's very easy to say to myself "I killed it on the beach today, this other stuff can wait" and easy as that, lose some of my results.
Just a thought.
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