Study on exercise and calorie burn: A big new finding
Good morning everyone, put a smile on your face and go for a walk in this fantastic weather. So it's hump day today as they call it you know, the hump in the week. I said this before and someone thought hump day was not hump as in hump in the road and then on the way down they thought it was because it was a hump. You're humping on hump day, I don't know what was, I can't remember what someone said but it's like normal, it's like when you go over the hump on the hill and it's on the way down and then it was the end of the week. But anyway, so if you thought that guys it's wrong.
Speaker 1:I just today want to shout out your dreams once more about energy expenditure, exercise. Know you love your Apple Watch. I know you love Fitbit. I know you love being told how many calories you burn in a workout. But let's destroy it again.
Speaker 1:Because what we think we burn during a work out doesn't really impact us as much towards the end of the day as we really think. So let's have a look into this research review and let's discuss it. So there's good news at the end of this guys just to let you know. The calories you burned during exercise just don't add up. So say now you burned 100 calories from exercise, the net payoff is just 72 calories.
Speaker 1:So there's a drop of 28% going on you from what you think you've burned and that's if you're really accurate. Not only do calorie these fitness trackers overestimate the calories you burn in some cases cases between 20 to 91% which is crazy. Not only that, but actually even that those calories you think you burn exercise, only 72%, only 72 of those 100 of those calories are actually net add into your energy burn throughout the day. Does that make sense? Let me go into a bit more so it might make more sense.
Speaker 1:So these researchers, 18 countries, they looked at so many studies guys, so many studies and they wanted to look at the base metabolic rate, does that change with more activity? So base metabolic rate is your BMR, you know what you need for your body to survive, know, breathing, cells working, all that stuff just the bare minimum. So that's about fifty-sixty percent of your total energy expenditure per day. Then you've got your non exercise activity which is the second biggest factor. Then you've got your thermic effect of food, the calories used to digest food, and then you've got your physical activity, calories, calories burned doing exercise over day of you spread it out over the week.
Speaker 1:The goal of this study was to look at your base metabolic rate. Does that actually go down if you increase your activity? Does that make sense? So your survival calories, does that energy goes up? So you'd think if you burn three fifty calories on a run that you think your overall energy expenditure for the day would be three fifty calories more, right, if you had knock on for the run.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? That makes logical sense, right, that's what we think. And so the study found. Using data from seventeen fifty four participants, the study showed the base metabolic rate declines to compensate for the increase in physical activity. Activity.
Speaker 1:On average, total energy expenditure is 28% lower than it should be. Take over 350 calorie example, instead of burning an extra 350 calories, your total daily energy expenditure only increases by 252 calories. So you think you've burned 350 calories in a run, you've only actually added on 252 calories more to your day and that 350 calories from your run which is the accurate measurement using lab equipment, you might thought you've burned 500 calories when actually it's only added two fifty calories. So this is known as I mentioned yesterday, this is known as energy compensation. Siloprost is not really a 100% understood, but your metabolic rate slows down in response to increase in exercise.
Speaker 1:Okay, and this is what happens. The worst thing is, but I wouldn't say it's worse, say the people have got more weight this actually plays a bigger role, energy compensation is bigger so it actually will reduce the of calories you burn to exercise. So if you did exercise you're more overweight. The net calories burned from the exercise is less again than leaner individuals. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:Hopefully you're still with me. And you know you might be thinking why does all bodies work this way? Again, body doesn't want to lose weight or gain weight. And if the body sees the energy expenditure has gone up due to activities such as you know jogging, running or whatever towards more distance, might think the food is scarce in this area and you have to work hard and travel further to stay alive so therefore it's going to reduce the calories burned in other areas because it needs to basically hold on to as much energy as possible. Okay, now this is not again, this is not starvation mode it just adapts.
Speaker 1:Right, You need to look at what you think energy energy burned is in your grand scheme of this plan for your health and fitness lifestyle. So again a lot of you know this that if you're looking for fat loss then using workouts to burn calories isn't exactly the good way to go because you can obsess over how many calories you burned in a workout. This is where MyFitnessPal again, how many millions of users of MyFitnessPal right now are eating back the calories that they overestimates they burn. So everyone in MyFitnessPal is given their calories and macros and then they then it says, oh, you've walked this amount and you've done this exercise. Here's we estimate you've burned 500 calories, probably burned about 200 calories, two fifty calories and actually because of energy compensation they've only added 150 calories to their energy burn throughout the day.
Speaker 1:So there's like a 400 calorie difference and that's why people don't get results and that's why people go to the MyFitnessPal Reddit forum and ask for advice from strangers who have got no qualifications or any expertise what they should do. You know and when I see you know some people say no I'm going back to MyFitnessPal because it does what you guys do. It doesn't, it really doesn't. All MyFitnessPal is a tracking tool. That's all it is.
Speaker 1:You know I can give you the best tool in the world if you don't know how to use it and it's not actually guiding you in the right way, it's got a major flaw, that tool is not fit for purpose. So your energy burn through exercise is never 100% of what it says. So never actually add that on top. And that's why I keep telling people to say I've done more exercise today, should I consume more calories? No, over the course of the week the difference is minuscule.
Speaker 1:The difference is even less than you think. Right? It's even less than you think. And I think look, we should train for performance guys. I want to go to the gym to get strong.
Speaker 1:I want to go for a run to run a 10 k. I want to go and increase my engine and my cardiovascular system. I want to go and be more flexible and agile and stuff like that. We don't train to be like oh I burned 200 calories. That's the worst way to train.
Speaker 1:It's actually you shouldn't train if you're doing that because it's just gonna one it's not gonna get the results you want. Two it's gonna make training so boring. Oh, who wants to know how many calories are burning exercise? I do not want to know the information. It has no impact on me.
Speaker 1:I don't want to see it because it's so inaccurate. I can't be bothered. I will focus on the other performance metrics. Passage is important. I wanted to reconfirm that for everybody listening.
Speaker 1:So when you hit your macros, we have taken into consideration all of your activity. And exercise is such a small part of your total daily energy expenditure when you look at over the week, you know training from three times to five times a week isn't going to make a massive difference unless you go from training two times a week to seven times a week and those sessions are like sixty minutes long and you're doing you know a lot of running and stuff and your energy expenditure will be more. But for most of you we need to look at stop majoring in minor things, know, gym run course, don't look at the things that don't actually matter. So I'm telling you now just stop focusing on the energy burned and focus on what matters, daily habits. I remember seeing one of the feedbacks from one of the trials saying, you know, didn't have time to fit in tracking into my day.
Speaker 1:It's like, if all of you look at your phone time right now, it's hours per day guys, listen let's work from facts again. Let's not lie to ourselves, we've been open to this process and we've learned a lot. Let's be open once more. We spend a lot of time on our phones every day scrolling social media. It is an absolute flat out lie to say there's no time to track for five minutes a day.
Speaker 1:You can anchor habitat. What do we do every day that you can anchor tracking to? Well, you're brewing your cup of coffee in the morning, can whilst that's brewing you will track your macros on your phone. While you can copy meals over, can add stuff. It could be every time I eat, before I eat my food I will track it and then eat or after I've eaten my food as soon as I finish that last bite I will track my food.
Speaker 1:There's ways to add this into your life that is seamless and take seconds and I think that's important to do. Again, we work from reality with turtle method. We don't work from you know this imaginary land that we think we're at. We're working from reality, working from facts. Facts are we deceive ourselves.
Speaker 1:The facts are we think we burn more calories than we do. The facts are we think we eat less than we do. The facts are we think we've got no time but actually we've got all the time we're ever going to have. So we need to be more efficient with our time. So no point saying well, you know, I'm not a parent, don't have kids.
Speaker 1:So I have more hours in a day than someone that does. But it doesn't matter because that person who's got kids and is a parent doesn't doesn't look at someone who hasn't and goes well they got more time in me. You need to look inwardly and go right. Let's have a look at my day without judgment. Where am I wasting my time?
Speaker 1:Genuinely now let me have a look because you will be wasting time somewhere and you can gain it back and if it just five, ten minutes a day. Look, spending twenty to thirty minutes a day on your own mental health and your health and fitness right versus doing thirty minutes of extra work at work or thirty minutes of doing this task that really doesn't mean anything or thirty minutes quick check-in Facebook. The return on investment of doing thirty minutes of walking or exercise or journaling plus you know tracking is huge, it's life changing. Thirty minutes on the other tasks is actually minuscule, no difference to your life. So just remember that even though it's still the same thirty minutes of time, that thirty minutes you can dedicate to yourself every day and some of you have been amazing in terms of you looked at it and you've woken up earlier with energy, you wake up at six you have that thirty minutes in the morning to yourself.
Speaker 1:That's sometimes all you need to change your life because it knock on effect. You wake up, you got more time, you can journal, you can sit with yourself for a bit, you can get your walk in, you can listen to this podcast, get your head in the game one day at a time. That's all you got to do is focus on this day that's coming up. That's it. Then nothing's overwhelming one day at a time.
Speaker 1:As a quote we also have in Turtle Method is people say, we always say we can do hard things. And it's from one of the books we read, the book club. We can do hard things, absolutely. And with the support of the community it's even more possible. So just remember these things like let's work from facts, let's not kiddo ourselves, let's let's detach exercise calories from our fat loss goals, it just doesn't work, the studies are clear, just doesn't make sense to use it as a metric or an accurate representation of where we're going.
Speaker 1:And I just want to touch on another quick study as well here just so you guys are aware and I think it's a good one. It's about you know people who believe in conspiracy theories right and to quickly look at, to explain it was basically psychology students all females. They wanted us to look at the gullible conspiracist hypothesis. Basically, they found out is quite basic really. The higher someone's score for critical thinking, the less likely they were to believe in conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1:Conspiracy theories, and they again for fitness myths and everything like that, it is it seems like it comes from someone who knows what they're talking about who has critical thinking skills okay but to have critical thinking skills right this is the definition of critical thinking. So critical thinking is basically, let me find this definition, official definition for you guys, so I don't mess it up for you. Critical thinking, where is it, where's the definition gone from my notability studies for you guys. So here we go. According to Oxford it's the objective analysis and evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment.
Speaker 1:Let me say it again. The objective analysis, so no emotion, subjective, no coming from the me objectively looking at stuff like what you've been taught to do in the last few weeks especially on the master class Anatogon. And an evaluation of an issue in order to form a judgment. So we are only doing a judgment of something if we can look at it objectively, remove the emotion and look at the fact clearly. If we can do that, we don't fall for conspiracy theories because we go let's put it to the test.
Speaker 1:We don't fall for fitness myths because we go let me take a second and put it to the test. You might sound right mate, you sound right you say carbs are like cocaine and you know, sugar is like cocaine and because it's so nice and you might think logically I love sugar, it tastes amazing and yeah maybe it is like cocaine but then critical thinking skills can we
Speaker 2:go let's have a look
Speaker 1:at this objectively. So what it's saying is the highly addictive drug addicta. What you do then is like let's define addiction and let's do it now. We go okay so you're saying sugar is addictive as cocaine.
Speaker 2:So we'll just have a look
Speaker 1:at the addiction definition. The fact or condition of being addicted to a particular substance activity. Addiction is defined as a chronic relapse in disorder characterized by compulsive drug seeking continued use despite harmful consequences and long lasting changes in the brain. It is considered both a complex brain disorder and a mental illness. Now if you think you've got a sugar addiction, are you chronically going to the shop fighting people to buy pure cane sugar?
Speaker 1:Are you in the corner of a room shaking when you don't have that sugar dose every three hours? You know, are you willing to, you know, push people out the way in the shop and fight people just so you can buy the sugar quick or the chocolate quick so you can start scoffing it straight away. No, that's not what we do. So when we look at these objectively, it's not an addiction. Sugar is not an addiction like cocaine so straight away that's a false thing.
Speaker 1:The second thing is there's a difference between addiction and enjoyment. Know I can enjoy chocolate which has fat doesn't mean I'm addicted. These terminologies are very important to use because you need to watch how you speak to yourself. You can say I'm addicted to chocolate, it's so subtle right and you're like oh you don't know what to say and then you start thinking well I am addicted to chocolate and you see chocolate and go I can't stop myself I need it. But of course you can stop yourself.
Speaker 1:Of course you can stop yourself. You're so sucked in because you've told yourself this story that you're addicted to chocolate and therefore when you see chocolate your automatic reaction is to prove that hypothesis in your mind right. But actually if you can just take a second to just objectively look at the situation and take a step and just monitor and be aware of your thoughts, you actually create that space where you can decide, you can respond to whether you wish to eat that chocolate or not. Okay, that's the difference and this is where we need to go through these processes a lot. Might sound boring but it's gonna save you months and months and months, potentially years of frustrations from going from fad day to fad day because they sound so right.
Speaker 1:They sound right, sound yeah that sounds right. But unless we bring this type of question into things and definitions to what we're saying and being aware of our thoughts, being aware of what we say, we're always going to fall for these traps, always. So today guys again just a reminder to be aware of your thoughts without judgment today, without choice. Don't decide that's good and bad. Don't say I like this, I don't like that.
Speaker 1:Just observe, observe how you are in a room with biscuits. Observe when you go to the shop, know, observe when you're eating, observe when you walk back home and you just want to go and sit in the chair and go on your phone. Observe that urge, don't change it, just look at it, be like interesting you know, there's no change it like don't hate this, want to sit on the phone, just observe it all and be like non have this objective view of your behavior for now like a scientist And that's when you can be critical thinkers. And that's when you can have the power to decide and respond. And I'll touch on stoicism another time.
Speaker 1:But we want to respond, we don't want to react. We want to be aware and attentive without judging ourselves. And we want to be truthful and honest in the process. This is the reminder today to bring us straight back in to this and let's get going. So hopefully this voice note was useful.
Speaker 1:They're getting a bit long, I need to cut the back down to fifty minutes, but hopefully it's useful for anyone starting the new complete transformation program. You'll be doing strength training sessions for week one. They're quite simple and easy. Two sets each. Building it up for people on Octagon two where you're now ramping up the sets.
Speaker 1:We're getting into week eight, so ramping up the sets, ramping up the workouts in terms of volume. So you know the last three weeks of Octagon two whilst we've just started this new group for the Turtle Method Academy for app users only, The next three weeks are gonna be building up, building up, building up. So we take it one day at a time. Don't rush ahead too much. Don't do it right in Libby and he'll tell you, when you go gym with them after the baby, you want to go straight into big sessions.
Speaker 1:I was like, mate, slow it down. Let's build up over time. Let's gradually build up over time and we're going be better for it. We're going to progress. We're going to lower the risk of injury.
Speaker 1:We're actually going to enjoy the process instead of rushing to the end goal all the time. And that's what we want to do. So guys, have an amazing day. This is your prompt to write you one big thing down either in the app or on paper or whatever in your notepads and just get it done. That's a successful day.
Speaker 1:Get your one big thing done. What's that one thing today that if you did it would make your day a success no matter what. Get that done, commit to less, complete more and you'll be on the way for some happy days. So I'll see you on the radio guys, speak soon. Adios.
