Kurzgesagt: 'Your Workout Is A Bad Way To Lose Weight'. Is This True?

Your workout is a BAD way to lose weight.

I was tagged in this video by Kurzgesagt multiple times, and also asked for my opinion via message. On the whole, the video was great at trying to explain a very complicated topic. They explained that whilst exercising isn't always great for weight loss, but it is good for health (something I needed to reiterate as many people missed the point of their video or didn't watch it all the way through).

Have you ever worked out in the morning but then felt so tired you had to lie on the sofa for the rest of the day?

If you burned 500 calories from your workout, BUT you were less active for the rest of the day, maybe you save some of that 500 calories and do not get the weight loss results you expect.

This is an example of how adding in exercise calories can steal from energy you burn elsewhere.

It has been shown that some people with very high activity levels actually do not burn more energy than people who are more sedentary, which sounds like impossible, but it’s true.

However, it is important to note that there are other research studies refuting this phenomenon.

For example, if exercise was NEVER additive, endurance athletes would not need to smash back thousands of extra calories during their hard training phases, but they do.

So, whilst this ‘constrained’ model of energy expenditure is important to understand, it is also very important not to exaggerate the phenomenon.

Basically, some people who exercise more probably will lose weight pretty effortlessly, but others can crank up their exercise volumes and not notice much weight loss, if any.

Does that make sense?

Edit note: with the brick demonstration, I ran out of bricks but forget to change the numbers on the front so the yellow bricks that say "100" should say "200". It doesn't change the point of anything in the video, but it is a mistake I want to clarify.

P.S. At the end of each post, I remind you that my best-selling book, ‘Everything Fat Loss’ is currently on sale as an audiobook, plus digital/print versions from Barnes and Noble, Apple, Kobo, Google, and Amazon with an extra 5% off in Canada. Please feel free to grab it if you would like.

References:
- Hunter-gatherers as models in public health
- Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and the Evolutionary Biology of Energy Balance
- Physical Activity and Total Daily Energy Expenditure in Older US Adults: Constrained versus Additive Models
- Energy compensation and adiposity in humans
- Energy constraint and compensation: Insights from endurance athletes
- Effect of different doses of supervised exercise on food intake, metabolism, and non-exercise physical activity: The E-MECHANIC randomized controlled trial
- Effect of Exercise Training on Non-Exercise Physical Activity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials
- Perspective: Is the Response of Human Energy Expenditure to Increased Physical Activity Additive or Constrained?
- Deciphering the constrained total energy expenditure model in humans by associating accelerometer-measured physical activity from wrist and hip

[brettjosh]

Awesome video, really wanted to see a balanced reaction to this!

[nicktheodorou]

Great video. The example about endurance athletes was a perfect example. I like to track my energy consumption and energy expenditure. I track my energy expenditure with my Apple Watch. I work out every day which includes 7-10km of walking. If I increase my active energy I see the slightest decrease in my resting energy but a significant overall increase in my TDEE. If for some reason I don’t work out I see a significant increase in my resting energy but still no where near the TDEE on my workout days (e.g. 100 calorie increase of resting energy on non workout day for a total TDEE of 2000 versus a TDEE of 2500 on my workout days). So if my workouts were very small (e.g 100 calories) then there may not be a significant difference when it comes to total energy for weight loss.

[Erwan_DL]

This video really caught my attention as well, I was quite skeptical of their claim that "after a few months, all of the energy used by exercising gets compensated by lowering BMR/NEAT". I'm trying to dig into their sources to see if this really holds up.

[katiemaedit]

First I absolutely agree there area million reasons outside of weight to exercise. It vastly improves my mood, sleep, and enerby levels. Per weight loss. think it is a matter of self-experimentation and can be dependent on gender and life stage. When I exercise a certain amount, even if I don't change my diet much my weight will be a bit lower. Or to be more correct this was true for pre peri menopause me. Now I need to consistently exercise and eat, for me, insane amounts of protein to keep my weight down and to keep me feeling decent in general.
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[atquinn]

I think the message of the video is reasonable. I don't think you should be working out to lose weight. You should work out to get better at specific skills, get stronger, for the workout high it gives you, etc... If you want to lose weight, adjusting your diet is the most efficient way to do it.

[Frank_Jones]

Ben,

I'm glad you posted this video, and that you gave a measured analysis of the content. I would like to ad my thoughts, using anecdotal evidence, sample size n = 1.

I have been dealing with various minor injuries, so I decided back in October to add a more involved warmup routine and cooldown routine. SO, my workout looks like this:
1) 5 minutes on the elliptical.
2) 15 minutes of dynamic movement warmups.
3) My actual weight training.
4) Static stretching, sometimes preceded by 5 more minutes on the elliptical if my heartrate had dropped back to normal resting rate.

My weightlifting is very intense, and burns a lot of calories. People say, "Weightlifting does not burn a lot of calories. " Not true. At least, not true for everyone. I perform every set with very high intensity; as a result, my entire workout is a cardio workout in addition to the weight training. When I finish a hard set of a compound lift, my HR is often at 140-160. When it returns to 100, I start my next set. So, that 4- or 5- step workout routine does in fact burn a lot of calories, far mor than I could possibly compensate for by sinking into the couch for the rest of the day - especially since I do this workout toward the end of the day anyway. I do not compensate by eating extra calories, because I count my calories (very accurately).

Sometimes I'll play racquetball afterwards. I say, "Only one or two games", because I know how much energy it burns, but, I love racquetball, so I sometimes end up playing 6 games. The racquetball games alone can burn 1000 calories on top of the rest of the workout's energy expenditure. This means I was burning 1500-2000 calories per day on days that I played racquetball. And yet, I have gotten into debates with people who claim that "exercise is one of the worst ways to lose weight". I find this baffling. If anyone who wants to lose weight trained with me in the manner I described above, their pounds would fly off so fast it might actually be unhealthy. For reference, I am a very fit 175-pound male, and during a 5-week period in which I was training as described above, I ate 4500 calories a day and lost 7 pounds (Going from 178 to 171; now I'm back around 175). These were not scale errors or water weight errors. I have various methods and techniques to ensure as much statistical accuracy as possible.

I should add - I wasn't actually trying to lose weight. I was in a bulking phase and was very frustrated to see my weight dropping each week. I was force feeding as much as I could, but it wasn't enough. So, if a person who is trying to GAIN weight and is eating 4500 calories a day can actually end up LOSIONG weight by doing so much exercise, then it's certainly one option for people to consider when trying to lose weight. What's the alternative? Cutting calories? That seems to just leave people tired and miserable, leading them to move less and exercise les, creating an ever-worsening cycle of muscle loss, decreased metabolism, and even greater difficulty fixing any of it.

Exercising - it's a great way to burn calories, lose weight, and, as you noted, has numerous other healthful benefits.

[eric]

Let's add that lifting weights is a great way to lose *fat* (and gain muscle) even if calorie balance remains the same (at least for the first few years of consistent lifting). And I assume that "losing weight" is meant to mean "losing fat".

[MikeFrame]

Isn't weight loss related mostly to breath ie gas exchange? How could this apply to an exercise plan?

[dangallagher]

The comparisons with hunter gatherers are also misleading because they don't account for energy intake (at least as far as I know).
Your calories in will affect the calories out, your body will burn more when you eat more. I've burned between 3000 at the end of a long cut to 4400 at the end of a very dirty bulk.
It goes without saying that the average sedentary westerner eats more than the average hunter gatherer

[IoannisAndroulakis]

I absolutely love kurtzgesagt, but this video of theirs was a big disappointment. It follows the very well known recipe of exaggerating a true bit, in order to make the bigger lie believable. I was very disappointed and if it is not a one-off occurrence, i will start doubting the past videos i loved from them as well.

[testitestmann]

They mention in their sources, that extreme athletes can burn up to 9000kcal. Okay, yeah, but there is a bit of a gap between 2600 and 9000. So when does exercise start to add to the CO part? Their video is simply ignoring that part which feels really questionable.

[aounjose]

I use to believe in these people until I saw that video.

[Enoch-Root]

The Kurzgesagt video really annoyed me, not only is it factually incorrect, but it also ends up providing excuses for people to not work out. Losing weight and looking good are massive motivators for people to work out, the additional benefits are a great side effect for most people.

Obviously the calories burned through exercise can't be simply added to your basal metabolic rate of energy expenditure, since your body is simultaneously using energy through exercise and also using energy to fuel your normal body functions. So if you exercised for thirty minutes and used 400 calories in that time, part of that is energy that would have been used even if you had spent the time on the sofa.

Telling people that they'll burn the same amount of energy whether they're active or sedentary is irresponsible and untrue.

[ThePassifi]

Oh my gosh, thank you. That video just drove me crazy. It's part of an array of similar articles and videos all just missing the mark by overshooting. I e.g. definitly and doubtlessly burn more energy when I exercise (and somewhat paradoxically I also move around MORE outside of exercise) steadily raising my calory consumption without adding weight. Endurance athletes also came to mind. I wouldn't be so nice in my critique of Kurzgesagt though, cutting out a small slice of the bigger picture and proclaiming it as objectiv scientific truth just to, let's be honest, create a more conscise and simpler message is not okay for such a big and far reaching channel.