Exercise. Now there’s a tricky subject.
Those who have attended my ‘Going Against the Grain’ talk will have heard my views on “Eat less, Move more” and how that is all too often a doomed strategy because our bodies are homeostatic. Only in the very short term will burning calories with exercise lead to a calorie deficit. Quickly your body will balance things out and make you pay for those burnt calories by either making you more hungry or slowing your resting metabolism to recoup those exercised calories. My mantra: you cannot run away from a bad diet!
But that falsely gives the impression that I don’t think exercise is important when changing your lifestyle and diet in particular.
Undeniably exercise of any sort improves mood and sense of well being. No question. And high stress levels can impact the effectiveness of a diet so exercise as a de-stresser is important.
But there’s more. Aerobic exercise particularly the high intensity interval kind, stimulates the production of BDNF an essential factor for maintaining and developing brain function. In fact low levels of BDNF are consistently observed in patients with Alzheimer’s, dementia, MS, MND and Parkinson’s. Exercise boosts the levels of this important neural growth factor.
The same interval-based aerobic exercise also boosts levels of the hunger quenching hormone leptin. Get those levels up and you’ll naturally feel less hungry because of leptin’s key role in controlling your appetite thermostat (appestat).
Exercise also seems to reverse insulin resistance in the muscles. Probably worthy of a few posts in its own right, development of insulin resistance is increasingly seen as the common factor in the development of many of our chronic metabolic diseases.
So please do exercise but don’t obsess over how many calories you burn; instead marvel at the amazing body biochemistry you are boosting.