Cruel Twist: Exercise Reduces Calories Burned at Rest in Individuals with Obesity
upstart writes:
Exercise reduces the amount of calories burned at rest in people with obesity, according to a new study by researchers from the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Roehampton.
The study, published in Current Biology on August 27, found that people who exercise burn fewer calories on body maintenance, therefore markedly reducing the calorie burning gains of exercise. This reduction in energy burned at rest was most pronounced in individuals with obesity and also, to a lesser extent, in older adults.
Analysis based on data from 1,750 adults in the IAEA doubly labelled water database (www.dlwdatabase.org) showed that in individuals with the highest BMI, 51% of the calories burned during activity translated into calories burned at the end of the day. For those with normal BMI, however, 72% of calories burned during activity were reflected in total expenditure.
[...] "When enrolled into exercise programs for weight loss, most people lose a little weight. Some individuals lose lots, but a few unlucky individuals actually gain weight," said Prof. John Speakman from SIAT, co-corresponding author of the study.
The reason for these individual responses is probably because of what are called compensatory mechanisms. These include eating more food because exercise stimulates our appetite, or reducing our expenditure on other components like our resting metabolism, so that the exercise is in effect less costly.
Journal Reference:
Vincent Careau, Lewis G. Halsey, Herman Pontzer, et al. Energy compensation and adiposity in humans, [Open] Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2021.08.016)
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