The‘ exercise causes weight loss’ myth 87 So off I went to the library to look at the research on the relationship between exercise and losing weight. What I found was not what I expected at all. Basically, the relationship between exercise and weight loss is very weak. In fact, most researchers agree that the relationship between exercise and losing weight is essentially not significant. If there is a relationship it is only between exercise and keeping the weight off. So let’ s break this down. Let me quote from a talk developed by the highly respected North American Association for the Study of Obesity( NAASO): 10 Data from randomized controlled studies suggest that adding exercise to dietary therapy does not significantly increase short-term weight loss compared with dietary therapy alone. This is a consistent finding when you look at the research into weight loss.‘ But how can this be?’ I hear you ask.‘ Every doctor since forever has been telling us we need to exercise more if we want to lose weight!’ Intuitively it would seem to make sense – the more we exercise the more fat we burn off. But this is too simplistic. There are other factors at work here. Most commonly what happens is that either through being more hungry after exercise or through misjudging how much we have burnt off, we can easily eat as much as the energy we have burnt off, and usually more. Linda was a classic case of how exercise can leave us thinking we can afford to eat way more than we burn off so that, even with high levels of exercise, we end up gaining weight, or at least – for many of us – not losing it. 10 Visit their website at www. obesityonline. org and go to the‘ Slide Library’ and find their talk on‘ The role of physical activity in obesity therapy’.