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I have a master's degree in neuroscience and the main thing I have learned is that, exercise makes everything better. Cardiovascular problems, mental health issues, diabetes, cognitive decline, chronic pain. And it's more than just what's explained in the video, the mere fact that the muscles move signals the whole body that the cells should be fixed and regenerated and the inflammation should be lowered. Just exercise people
@@user-hg4tt9sq7y It's pretty simple, reduce calories to 1700-1800 if you're a male. Track your calories closely, you may think you're dieting, but you may actually be just at "maintenance".
@@Koos_R obviously you wouldn't eat 10.000 calories at once, just like you're not gonna burn 10.000 calories in one go. Still doesn't change the fact that eating just 1.000 calories more per day for 10 days, is a lot easier than burning 1.000 additional calories a day through exercise.
Yes, but the video is misleading. Saying people in developed countries burn the same amount of calories doesn't reflect that 70% of the population are overweight. Whereas it's not the case in the hunter-gatherer communities. So straight away the conclusion can be drawn that in such case, the activity would eliminate obesity.
For everyone out there that want to change your mental health habits and keep living correctly I would recommend reading book called The 21 former doctor secrets by rachel morgan, she is talking behind industry
I think it’s not entirely true. They are oversimplifying a complex process. Exercise indeed increases the energy you spend but not as much as thought previously
@@oriolroda yeah, ik they dumb things down a lot but simplifying it makes it easier to understand, besides working out doesn't kill ya (unless it does)
This video helped me realise why exercise is so important for mental health. I can now recognise the bad stories my brain is telling me are a result of me not spending that energy elsewhere. So now it is giving me vivid videos of my friends leaving me or natural disasters because it needs to use all that excess energy on something! So yeah, I now work out more.
Yeah exactly. If you have an overabundance of calories your body will burn that through things like anxiety. If you burn off that energy naturally your body has no energy for anxiety and such
Me too! I have generalized anxiety disorder/adhd/asd. I actually started to work out for the first time ever to be honest before this video came out. This completely changed my mindset! It actually made me realize that working out will not make you lose weight by it’s self (also looked up a bunch of papers on it (especially the effects on your immune system)). I still love candy and ice cream but I tell my self I can not have iy because of the goals I am working toward. (No set date either trying to lose 1 to 2 pounds every week with a goal of 100 pounds). Good luck to you too my friend ❤
What the video didn't say is exercise benefits mental health in other ways such as improving sleep (because you're more physically tired), getting outside, joining a community (such as a sports club), and releasing endorphins! It's also an opportunity to feel proud of yourself for achieving something (like now you can do ten push ups when you couldn't do two before), and it's a form of self care. So you're signalling to your subconscious that "I'm taking some time for myself, because I'm worth the effort!"
One of the best things I heard that helped me change the way I think about exercising: “Stop correlating exercise with weight loss. You need to exercise as part of regular maintenance for your body.” Some people might find that depressing, but putting exercise in a different box than weight loss helped me make it more of a priority.
Honestly, framing exercise as "regular maintenance for your body" is a really good way of looking at it. Ultimately it's an investment in how well your body functions down the road rather than something that is going to fix any major problems that you have right now.
It also helps to measure calories consumed vs calories burned. Walking a mile only burns about 100 calories. A big slice of pizza can be 700+ calories. I ask myself, is it easier to walk 7 miles or just not eat the pizza?
That’s why is important to do various types of exercise like swimming, biking, running, hiking. They work out all parts of your body, not just one or two areas.
Exercise should always be measured in fun! And if you don't have fun going to the gym, look for an activity that u actually like. For me by far the most effective. Don't have to go too hard, just so regularly, because you just like it.
It's true. I learned this years ago reading fitness articles which pointed out just how few calories most forms of exercises actually burn. My hour workouts often wouldn't even balance out my lunch. About the only times I'd exercise and burn a ton of calories was when I was in college and played a couple hours of pick-up basketball on the weekends. And as the video predicted, once I was done on those days I'd usually go home and not do much of anything the rest of the day (and probably eat whatever I wanted). But while working out may not be as great for losing weight as we’d like, it is great for many other things. For example, many people in the world have trouble with back pain. While it can have many causes, the most common one is weak muscles. Strengthening my muscles by lifting weights did more for me in a few months than two years of stretching and going to a chiropractor did.
I am currently losing weight. I started at my maximum weight of 360 pounds and am currently at 315 pounds after two months. I began with strength training and then added a diet. I have significantly improved my mobility and can now last longer on bike rides, walks, and while doing work in general. I couldn’t be happier now that I am active and can stand up without using my hands. Life is good 304lbs/ 137kg currently 6ft/183cm
Had heart issues before and its way you believe lies they tell you, Just finished book called The 21 former doctor secrets by rachel morgan and you can read things behind industry
As someone living with chronic depression, it was cathartic in a weird kind of way to hear you put it as excersise "may ease depression". It always irks me when people online seem to claim that it mitidates it so well you might just be depressed *because* you don't work out enough. I can tell you through 25 years of experiences, "may ease depression" is a hell of a lot more accurate. When I'm in a slump a workout set can certainly make me more energized, but that doesn't always translate to my mood, and it doesn't always last very long. But for broad averages, there certainly is an upward trend when I've been better about remembering my workouts
@@DeathlyDrained Agreed, I hate these types of videos. It comes off as encouraging terrible lifestyles ( not working out, eating terrible diets, not take care of your health, being lazy etc ) and saying working out broadline meaning endeavor.
I did my research. This video is a little bit misleading. Especially that part suggesting you can't lose fat by exercising, because no matter what you do, your calorie expenditure will stay the same (~ 2600 kcal for men). This is a bold statement and it is simply not true as such. You can check Caitlin Thurber et al, 2019. They measured energy expenditure among ultramarathon runners over a long period. Their expenditure at the beginning of the run was around 6000 kcal/day. After many weeks it was around 5500 kcal/day. It says two things: 1. The statement above is not true at absolute numbers (otherwise it would be again 2600 kcal, which is nonsense). 2. It seems, there really might be some adaptive processes in your body that lower the energy expenditure after some time to a certain extent. However, how much and why this happens is still quite unclear. This video is based mostly on two studies from Pontzer et al 2012 and 2016. The design of this study is quite weak and results are very limited. At the end of the study, they even state "... (we) did not examine the effects of imposing increased physical activity on Westerners ... and increased physical activity has been shown to play an important role in weight loss and weight-maintenance programs" So to wrap it up. *Some research* *suggests* that even when you exercise, your body *may* balance your energy expenditure *for some amount*, so it *may* happen that even if you are exercising, with the same calorie intake, you won't lose fat. So basically, if you start jogging for 30 mins every day or going to the gym twice a week, the rise in energy expenditure is not that significant + it may happen that your body will lower the expenditure somewhere else, so if you don't change your calorie intake, you might not get leaner. Btw this problem is usually referred to as an additive vs constrained model. Additive = every exercise adds to your basic level of expenditure. Constrained = when exercising, your basic level of expenditure lowers for a certain amount so the total expenditure stays on the same level. I suppose that the truth lies somewhere in between, but we still need to get more precise data through research. For those who are interested in details, I highly recommend reading a perspective from Gonzalez, J. T., Batterham, A. M., Atkinson, G., & Thompson, D. (2023)
Your observation would be valid if they did "the run" regularly for months. The whole point is you need to do it consistently for a long time before the body adapts. The Hadzi people had done the ≈ 9 km walks for years and the western people had sat for years in the study group. You are just saying "no, that 2600 kcal is nonsense" while that's what they frigging MEASURED. Do you also argue against your scale when it says 200 lbs? Even then, it is obviously more complex than can be put into this one 12 min video that is designed for the general population.
The story in the video seems to be more like "so you start out a bit fat and start exercising a bit. Maybe you lose a bit of weight in the beginning, but quickly the body adapts to the new exercise level and the weight loss stops because energy for the exercise is reallocated from other systems, but mostly not from fat". This is a very different situation compared to ultramarathoners. A typical Westerner starting out a bit fat certainly cannot expend that much energy in exercise as an ultramarathoner (and probably should not). And, within the range of calorie expenditure by exercise consistently achievable to a typical slightly plump office worker, the assumption that typical calorie expenditure of 2600kcal/day will not vary significantly regardless of whether there is a little of exercise or none at all, may well hold.
It’s no secret the Pontzer’s hypothesis have been contested. I’m a little worried Kurzgesagt who usually do a good job of investigating just hopped on the train without much asking. In my personal experience I was only able to control my weight through exercise but for my wife it is the opposite: dieting. I would still advocate for exercise for it‘s numerous positive ramnifications for everyone.
Thanks for writing this comment better than I could. It's so obvious to anyone who has done endurance training that you must eat more to maintain your weight than you would if not doing endurance training. I do endurance cycling, which has the unique advantage of precisely measuring all the power I produce via a power meter. Yesterday I burned 3000kcal on my training ride. My BMR is 1500 kcal. In order to keep my daily caloric needs below 3000kcal, my BMR would have to adjust to below zero. It's mathematically impossible for me to have a maintaince calorie level of 2600. What this video tells me is that most people who exercise are doing fluff workouts. It's not really their fault; they're doing their best with the bad advice they've been given. I think the solution is to reallocate some of the creativity and dedication we put in work into exercise. It's not that complicated, but it's takes some study and dedication to understand how much and what to do. If everyone spent 10-15 hours per week on exercise starting from childhood, I believe obesity and diabetes would be largely eliminated, even without major changes to our diet.
I find it is very misleading to say that the calories consumed are almost identical, when Ponzter et al 2012 which is the source used to make that claim also presents that the weight of the Hadza population is around 60% of their western counterparts, which means they burn the same amount of calories cause they weigh a lot less. That means that you can lose weight until your calorie expenditure of the lower weight is equal to that which they had before refuting the main point of the video.
Agreed, no idea why they didn‘t explain it correctly, everyone watching the video will have a wrong understanding of how it works… First video which is pretty bad from this channel, hope they correct it.
They do mention this very briefly at about 3:02 when the narrator says, "your body keeps your calorie budget *per unit of you* pretty stable." I agree they could have made this much clearer.
Exactly, as someone who lifts weights 3x a week and runs 30+ miles a week (averaging over 18k steps a day) I can lose weight eating 2800 calories. Here they say the average male needs 2600 to maintain. I also weigh about 20-30 pounds less than the average male in the US depending on the source. The body adapts but not to this extreme.
I was really confused by the first half of the video because I've lost 90 lbs over a couple years with exercise (power walking and VR fitness workouts) and tracking my calories, but then the second half of the video brought everything together. And it makes me glad I'm committed to exercise since it makes everything better and increases my quality of life over time.
The video didn’t say anything about muscle growth when exercising. One might gain weight, because muscles are heavy. But, having and using more muscles has certainly a lot of impacts on the body. I would be surprised if it hadn’t on eating and burning nutrients, too.
yeah but they were talking about calories burned, not any gains you make. This video was just related to how much extra calories you actually burn whilst working out compared to not working out.
@@user-dc5pm9uw5c Yes, but, as I have said it would surprise me if a higher muscle ratio wouldn’t impact calorie burning - same as insulin effects as mentioned in the other comment. And after all do we care about our calorie balance? I don’t even care about my weight. I care about what I look like. And I dare to say so does anybody else. They just believe burning more calories than taking in will get them there. First I personally would like to have more belly muscles and second I would like to have less belly fat. No calorie balance will gain me any muscles. If I lost weight, my genetics would determine where I would lose weight first. Even if exercising my belly and gaining muscles would lead to losing fat, my body could be wired by genetics to burn fat from other parts of my body first. Yes, if listening carefully, they video doesn’t say „stop exercising, reduce calories“. And it refers to a video to come about the effects of reducing calories. But if not watching out for that you easily get the message to improve your figure you can stop exercising and just decrease calories. Anyway I personally am too lazy; my belly muscles will remain a wish. And as long as I fit into my current pants, I eat what tastes good to me. Within this range I just try to prefer healthy, quality food and try to avoid eating without being hungry.
The difference between having e.g. your current muscle amount vs 5kg more is negligable. Now if you are properly writting down and increasing your workouts everytime(i am mostly always sore so that's another extra measure for me), then yes you should be burning more everytime and you will lose fat overtime. But most people like me, spend years working out (9-10 for me) basically doing the same workout everytime with no change, because we aren't writting it down and increasing it everytime. I thought i will simply push myself to the max everytime and get there... well the body disagreed, i plateaued for ages. Obviously i wasn't at the same strengths etc for 10 years due to experience, spending more time, less, quitting, restarting etc.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="430">7:10</a> "It's like taking on more debt when you're in the red. It works for awhile, but then you go bankrupt and die." That got dark fast 😵☠️
I definitely visibly lost a lot of fat through regular outrigger canoe training. I promise you I was not ever eating less - I had to eat so much food in winter it literally got bothersome. I got tired of taking more time out to get my hands on more healthy food. This video also does not cover makeup of diet (macro allocation, fiber, glycemic index of foods, etc) and only considers calories. This video doesn’t explain why some people are very slender and want to bulk up while others struggle to lose weight. Honestly. This stuff is so, so, so complicated. Anyone who thinks they have “the answer” to human activity and wight is completely full of it.
@@himbagoodboi6222that's what this video is still saying. Your body just starts using less calories for useless stuff and counter balances the workout. The video literally tells you less calories means weight loss
@@VikingValhallas Which simply is not true, at least for most of the people I've talked to. When I'm on vacation where I ride my bicycle the whole day from campsite to campsite for weeks I eat like a monster, but I don't gain weight. As soon as I'm back to my office job and only have my regular exercises my hunger and calorie intake goes down a lot and I don't lose weight there either.
@@NinjaRunningWild Ah yes, not spending money is a really good way to save, problem is you end up dying from starvation in the darkness since you forgot to pay the bills and buy food.
This has actually kinda motivated me to exercise again. When I thought exercising was about losing weight it just wasn't that attractive of an idea to workout everyday to lose all of like 10lbs or something within a few months, but understanding its far more about just kinda making you feel better, I can get behind that.
Same. Thinking of exercise as some kind of budgeting exercise where I am trying to manage calorie usage has always made it feel so unsatisfying. But the perspective shift of, "no, the exercise itself will be satisfying. don't you feel a bit more relaxed and happy after being active?" is super motivating to me. For me personally, this shifts exercise from something where I'm not "getting my effort's worth" unless it feels awful, into something that has the MUCH more attainable goal of "just be active every day". And that also makes total sense to me. It also feels like it would be easier to go from that to the intense exercise if I ever wanted to build muscle. The idea that weight is almost entirely related to diet instead is a little more depressing, but again makes sense.
I only recently started exercising.. I kept hearing that it's great for anxiety and depression, which had become unbearable ever since I started working from home and maybe taking 200 steps a day. My body is screaming at me to move, and I was ignoring it. Since taking up jogging and just general low impact exercises around the house, my mood has increased dramatically, I've found the motivation to quit vaping, and my anxiety is in check. (Still happens, but not crippling like it used to be) You HAVE to keep moving!!
@@jordanledoux197 For real, it's so crazy how much of a difference exercising makes in my general mood and everything. Even just choosing to walk to the store daily instead of taking the metro is good. Or for example choosing to go on a walk during a phonecall with a friend.
I’ve always thought exercise was more about how I feel than how much I weigh. I know plenty of big ppl who are still really fit, and plenty of skinny ppl who are in terrible shape. The important thing to me is whether I can enjoy my activities-walking, playing with the kids, biking, whatever-and as long as I’ve been exercising, I can. But if I have to stop for some reason (injury, illness), woof, it takes a while to get back.
Not making up to a million before retirement is unfulfilled retirement.!! I’m 54 and my wife 50 we are both retired w.ith over $7 million in net worth and no debts. Currently living smart and frugal with our money. No longer putting blames on FED for our misfortunes. Saving and investing lifestyle in the stock and forex market made it possible for us this early, even till now we earn weekly.
Crypto investment has really changed my financial status positively. I got my first house the year I started investing and today networth is over £732k
all you mention are all good but I’ll advise you venture into fx first because it will help you grow your portfolio very fast and it require not so much to start
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="451">7:31</a> "Humans evolved to be mad for calories. Because of our extremely hungry brains, and our EXTREMELY USELESS KIDS" as a kid, I can confirm that I am extremely useless.💀
It's not your fault. I think we all felt useless as kids at some point, especially when our toxic parents tell us we are useless. But remember that we didn't choose to be born, we were basically forced to be born, so it's the responsibility of our parents and shame on them for telling to thier kids that they are useless
@@Leo-ok3uji disagree, school is not the job. Learning is the job, we just made schools to help with that. Never let schools and teachers get in the way of learning. Or worse like in my case where they made me hate learning.
This is why my PT always told me not to worry about the scale when I was strength training! Because I wasn't really burning fat, but I was building muscle, so the numbers going up would have discouraged me. She always told me to worry more about how my body felt than any sort of numbers, because if I felt better it meant I was doing it right.
Sounds like a shitty trainer - you don’t put muscle on that fast. An adult male with a rigorous workout program might expect to gain a pound or 2 of muscle in a month, if they’re going very hard and eating tons of protein. If you put on 5-10 pounds of muscle you would look a LOT bigger, people would be asking if you’re on steroids.
Oh yes. Telling them working out wont help you lose weight which they were doing in hopes to achieve that will surely help them somehow, when they dont tell you what to do then.
@@nevergiveup5939 nobody cares bro, just live your life man, you have 80 whole years to live and have fun and youll be wasting them worrying on things beyond your understanding. You'll find out when you die, we all will. Nobody can know for certain unless they die.
@@TakeControl01 STOP EATING SO MUCH FOOD IT'S REALLY THAT FUCKING SIMPLE YOU AREN'T FAT BECAUSE IT'S JUST HARD; YOU CAN'T LOSE WEIGHT BECAUSE YOU'RE GODDAMN STUPID
As a certified trainer I completely agree. I'm making a series of reels responding to this video because I fundamentally disagree with @Kurzgesagt's premise. Please check out one or two of them if only to ensure that my critiques are on point.
@@SLFKimosabae Anybody with a basic understanding of human biochemistry knows this video is just straight up untrue. They literally disprove their own claims within the video. They said that an hour of walking burns around 260 calories, and then proceed to claim that we burn the same amount of calories sitting in an office all day as people who walk all day hunting and gathering.
@@WobbuMartin Right, but we should be charitable here. They are not stating this without evidence - that evidence is just cherry-picked to support the narrative that exercise is bad for weight management. But I don't think that's REALLY the narrative they wanted to sell to their audience. I think they wanted to relate the platitude "You can't outwork a bad diet", which I support, and is more true. I think they just went a step too far to appease the algorithm Gods and I'm really surprised Mike Isreatel endorsed this project. I'm really curious if the end-product is what he expected.
@@WobbuMartin We have to be charitable to Kurzgesagt here. Their narrative is backed by evidence - that evidence is just cherry picked. I think they wanted to relate the platitude "You can't outwork a bad diet" to their audience, which is more true, and I agree with, but they just went a little far trying to appease the Algorithm Gods. I'm actually really surprised that Mike Isreatel from @renaissanceperiodization endorsed this video. I'm very curious how different his consultation was from the final product.
@@WobbuMartinthe point was that the office person’s body spends its energy on activities other than walking instead, such as excessive inflammation, negative mental health, etc. If you exercise more you leave less energy available to your body for those harmful expenditures.
Do you want to bet that I will anticipate the content in a really accurate way? The less you eat, the less you gain weight, this is what you will find in the video on nutrition! And it will say that if you want to lose weight you must eat as little as possible. And it will also say that fasting for several days in a row, if you can, brings the best results. These are things that have been known for decades. Maybe it will also mention autophagy and so on. Do you want to bet?
It took me 2 years to lose my belly. I can tell you that it was very hard....but it is doable...it works. The problem is that people think that running 2 or 3 times on the famous "monday start" will work quickly, then it doesn´t, frustration sinks in, and people get back to the sofa thinking "well, it really doesn´t work, so whats the point?". The point is that you need to turn it into a habit. Won´t work overnight. But I was there and call tell you that it works. Life will get much better, more energy, less spending on junk food, more money for you, and the clothes will fit and look great on you. A 2 dollar shirt from costco will look like a Calvin Klein shirt dressing that model on the billboard. That´s why wealth also comes from a healthy life.
Changes actually do happen pretty quick, to the tune of 2-3 months. In the grand scheme of things (it took you years to get where you currently are) that's pretty reasonable. But people want to kill themselves with a week of exercise and see something then and there. When they don't they claim it's such an ultra slow process.
Moving more burns more calories assuming the laws of thermodynamics are true which they are. I lost 36 kg so far, I didn't change much I just do one hour of cardio everyday.
I'm 24 and weighing 54kg. I shunned exercise for a long time because I told myself I couldn't afford to lose weight; I already have a low BMI. But when I did a few weeks of simple exercise, my stamina increased immensely. Exercise is amazing, I hope to get back to it soon
I'm also 24 but toward the opposite direction, at 115kg (though I'm fairly tall at 187cm and the weight used to be 135kg). I struggle with exercise because I hate doing things that don't have a purpose. I could go for a long walk but it feels like such a waste of time when I could take a bus instead to get to whereever I happen to be going towards. Lifting weights feels stupid. But when I do the walking with a friend, suddenly you can make several hours vanish by going on a 20-25km walk and not having a problem with it because at that point it's hanging out while going in a direction, not wasted time. It's difficult to keep up though when your friends aren't generally particularly active.
@naomizmiti hi, may I ask what kind of exercise you’re doing? I’m on the same boat, or worse. And currently in need of gaining weight and wonder if you could give me some advice :)
I decided to lose weight around two years ago, and went from 250 lbs to 170 (6’2 F). I started out by swimming , but I went too hard and ate too much to compensate so I didn’t lose as much the first year. The next year I cut out fast food and soda entirely, and tried to eat as few ultra processed foods as possible. That plus continued swimming five days a week but not overdoing it was the sweet spot. Now I met my weight goal and am the happiest and healthiest I’ve ever been! It is possible!
I wonder what people these studies are using. As a D1 athlete, I tend to need to eat more, get hungry more, and I lose weight very easily. I also swim, so I do a cardio sport. I just wonder how that play into it when you work out 20 hours a week
The studies did not normalize for the weight differences between the Hadza peoples and the average american. The Hadza weight 60% of what the American participants did. At 60% the weight, every activity requires less calories. If you normalize for weight of the participants you see that the Hadza people burn significantly more calories than the sedentary people .
I've worked office jobs for 15 years or so. For a while I added doing a delivery one day a week and I shed pounds. I wish every office job had a physical component.
Yeah, I actually gasped when I saw this. Not because it was disgusting to me, but because it's so out of character for this channel. It's like when the incredibly polite person randomly gets mad and starts cussing. It's just not what I expected, I guess
You might find an outlet for stress, but the gym is not going to help and challenge you to rethink your life so you don't end up in a similar situation that is going to lead to heart break in the same way a therapist can
going to the gym literally is stress to your body, it will increase cortisol by a lot. The "exercises" that lower cortisol (which is also what the linked studies show) are low to moderate intensity things like walking, swimming, table tennis etc.
Funny enough, I used to play a lot of video games at an internet cafe. I knew the owner personally and told him that I wanted to lose weight before I graduate high school back in 2017. The very first thing he told me is to not exercise yet but to fix my diet or what I ate. Watching this video now, I cannot believe he was telling the truth. I salute you middle aged Uncle internet cafe owner, I'm 25 now and have been fixing my diet ever since. Less fast food and more into cooking for myself.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="228">3:48</a> I heard someone say that this is based off of a poorly done study that was reevaluated and found different results, meaning this is not entirely true. I don't feel like researching it because I don't need to lose weight but people that do should probably read up on that.
Steadily gained weight despite regularly going to the gym over the course of 10 years, topping out at 228 lbs (I'm 6 feet tall). Stopped going during lockdown, started regularly jogging instead while counting calories, got down to 190 in less than six months and got to 168 in 2022 before I had to cut back due to injury. Hovered around 175 for the past year. Whenever anyone asks me what workout burns weight the most, I tell them adjusting their diet did more good for me than any exercise I could recommend. Even just swapping out soda for seltzer water can make a difference.
Yea if your workouts in the gym were weightlifting those don't burn that many calories vs cardio. If the goal is to lose weight, you would adjust your diet first then cardio and then weightlifting. Ideally you would do all 3 considering muscle mass is good and necessary for a lot of things, one of the biggest predictors for surviving cancer.
@@clambo7786 To be blunt, it really doesn't matter. Packing on muscle provides diminishing returns when it comes to health. Diet, social relationships, and emotional strain make up 90% of the physical health equation. If they feel healthy and happy, and their doctor gives them a clean bill of health, they don't need to change a thing. They're doing well
Does anyone know when they're going to put out the food video? I felt like the end of this implied that it would be the next video but they've made two or three since then. I REALLY want to know what they have to say about food. This exercise video blew my mind!
As someone who has more of a problem with keeping their weight in the other direction, and moves to much in times where sitting still and focussing would be appropriate, statements like "when you start working out, your body may move less at other times" actually sound rather wonderful. Reducing constant stress also sounds really nice.
I mean eating less is not that hard, if so, you have a much bigger problem than your weight, it's in your head. Sort that out before trying to lose weight, so the rest goes with it
Yeah, I cope with a lot of internal stress too, and struggle to build or maintain my weight. Just keep going, get your post-workout endorphins when you can. Cheers!
I've been using exercise as an outlet for anxiety, I recommend it. It's like meditation because it forces you to focus on the activity you're doing for the moment
@@xBintu That's only true for a portion of the population. The rest of us have bodies that tell our brain to keep eating and put on fat in case there is famine. It's not something that willpower can easily overcome when it's as strong of a desire to eat as what the signaling chemicals in the body trigger. That's why appetite suppressants have been used for weight loss, but don't work because the body just moves to a new equilibrium of being even hungrier. The only solution for most of the population to maintain a healthy body fat percentage and weight is a combination of a balanced diet that covers all nutritional needs (fiber needs to be in here for most people), some exercise, and portion control to limit calories. To recover from when we have become overweight or have too high of body fat percentage takes medications in the same family as Ozempic to cut off the chemical signal that makes us hungry at the source. Nothing else has worked effectively.
One very important thing the video glanzes over is that the study also included Bolivian Farmers. A quote from the paper: "The greater energy demands of traditional farming lifestyles evident in this study (Fig. 1, 2) suggest that the adoption of agriculture brought with it an increased workload for Neolithic foragers". And looking at the figures it shows that the farmes do have a higher energy expenditure per kg of bodymass compared to the western test group. While the whole study is more or less statistical insignificant, if we really want to read from the data, it would suggest that the lower energy expenditure is most likely evolutionary. Meaning it can not be applied to the western civilization!
Good point. The conclusion that you burn more or less the same regardless of movement just doesn't make sense and does not match my personal experience at all.
Good catch. I noticed the farmer data points too and am glad I'm not the only one. They clearly differ from the hunter-gatherers. They weigh about the same as the hunter gatherers, but burn much more per kg body mass than westerners... probably because they are doing physically demanding labor all day. This point is conveniently ignored in the 2012 paper's conclusions.
Thanks for pointing this out. I need to look at that study again now. I've been making a series of reels in response to this video and this is something that I missed.
Bolivia is a western civilization, if you are talking about socio-economic disparities amongst countries you could go with 'underdeveloped/developing/developed' nations as you see fit. Maybe it's because I'm sleepy but I found it so odd I had to comment
@@mariajosefinarodriguez2991 That is exactly the point :) Bolivian farmers are part of western civilization. At the very least a lot closer to it compared to the Hadza tribe. In contrast to the Hadza ppl, the farmers certainly do show an increased energy expenditure with increased movement and work.
Chalking up chronic inflammation mainly to lack of exercise is misleading, though - it's mostly caused by regular old stress & pollutants / irritating chemicals. The takeaway should be to decouple getting more movement from the bullshit goal of looking thinner or stoping to treat that as the goal state. Goal-directed movement works a lot better than "exercise" - a great contributor to public health might be simply building cities in such a way that walking or biking to places is practical.
I don't think this comment will reach the Kurzgesagt team, but I just want to say a huge "thank you" for linking the sources in the video description. After first watching this video when it came out, I was skeptical of the claim that we each have a fixed calorie budget and that exercise has little effect on it. I'm reading the linked articles (your source page is so well organized), and I'm learning so many new things. I don't understand why such research isn't better known; it's decades-old science based on the cited research, but it appears mainstream health and weight-loss recommendations, websites, blogs, etc. haven't caught up yet. I bought some of your merch before, and I'm due to order again, not least to support this incredibly insightful channel.
Fitness is a means to an end. Maintaining a healthy diet is really hard if you feel hungry and unmotivated all the time. And because exercise makes you feel better, it helps a lot in sustaining healthier habits
@@IusedtohaveausernameIliked in the context of this video (losing weight being the end) fitness can't be enough because it doesn't work by itself. In another context it can definitely be an end in itself though
What is a fact, though, is that I now need a lot more calories per day than my friends who weigh 20kg less than me- because these 20kg are basically all calorie-burning muscle. I think that should‘ve been stated more clearly, because thanks to the muscles I have, I can everyday eat as much as I want without ever losing my sixpack. So, exercise is a way to maintain a slim body while being in a calorie surplus for other people.
I just clicked on the link to the sources in the description.. wow! You really listed sources for every single sentence and even explained every statement further, that must be A TON of work, but tysm for your scientific contribution!!
Thank the sources who actually did the studys, not the youtube video. Making a video isn't a contribution to science, even if it's an educational video.
@@Fun_DipsScience is only worth it, if people get hand down the knowledge. There are tons of studies for everything, but only a few are published in a way that the average dude can consume and understand it.
EXCELLENT VIDEO !!! I am a brain scientist working at the intersection of movement, mental health and nutrition and can wholly recommend this video!! For people hunting for the answer "HOW TO LOOSE WEIGHT": Food, my friends, first control your food (type and portions). Then exercise moderate to high, whatever you can do almost daily. 25 minutes should be fine. Of course this is the simplified explanation. It is not completely fair to say that if you exercise then you would only "Rebalance" your energy expenditure. In my opinion the stages are : Fitness is a whole body concept not just visible physical one. Unfit human: No diet control + Exercise = The rebalancing starts to happen with weight loss Improved fitness: Some diet control + Exercise: Accelerated rebalancing with lesser harmful effects of extra energy in your body but NOT A LOT OF WEGHT LOSS Good fitness: Diet control + Exercise: Rebalanced and restored BUT NOT A LOT OF WEIGHT LOSS Great to excellent fitness: Your systems are tuned to correct levels, you are burning optimal energy for CORRECT REASONS IN THE BODY. Now you can push to loose weight. Then the extra work you put in will go in eliminating things from your body that it does not require: LEADING TO SIGNIFICANT VISIBLE WEIGHT LOSS.
I've had s similar conundrum. The amount of food I need to cover my tiredness (after the gym) is not even close to being low enough. I don't spend enough at the gym. Regular people cannot afford to spend 2-3 hours in order to spend that huge amount of calories.
The German Journal of Sports medicine argued the findings of the Hadza study for just calculating absolute values. The hadza do have a much greater calorie expenditure once you calculate it proportionately to their body mass
@@tonishallaste5239 Basically a Hadza burns as much energy while walking all those miles every day as the average american just needs to stay alive, because the average American is about 85lbs heavier.
Obesity is not a single input problem. It's not just about moving or calories. It's also about the types of foods, the types of drugs and the types of ailments the people have
It's still hard wired into human brains to share food. Toddlers of 2 years age will try to feed their parents with their food. When people go on lunch break, they generally prefer going in groups. Sharing a meal is a very specific human treat.
I feel like a child at a playground when I'm at the gym. Strengthening my hips and lower back reversed the pain I dealt with from being stuck at a desk for years.
Same. Doing even some basic weight exercises for 10 minutes every other day pretty much eliminated my back and neck pain: 1 minute pushups, 1 minute arm curls with dumbbells, and then 2 minutes rest, and repeat for 3 sets of exercise total. I later found I could skip the 2 minute rests, taking my exercise down to 6 minutes every other day and it was just as effective -- literally 20 minutes a week, even if it was not at all fun. To anyone sitting on the fence, give it a try with just the pushups! You'll be sore after the first 2 or 3 sessions, so be prepared for that, but you can do it. Note: I always stopped if I felt joint pain and would take off a few days or until it felt better. Muscle burn was okay, but joint pain signals something is wrong (at least for me). Talk with your doctor, etc, to find out the right exercise approach for you.
Same here but for different reasons. After having my second kid I started to have serious lower back issues and was resorting to OTC pain meds to sleep. Lifting weights, RDLs and hip thrusters "cured" me in just two months.
I don’t run but I get a runners high during and after a good workout. I do cardio first then weights. I get the high during the weights part. Does anyone else get this?
Because the video is wrong. At most the body will balance out very light exercise but it can't break the laws of thermodynamics and create energy from nothing. So athletes absolutely do burn more energy than office-sitters
Great video, the only thing I miss here is that body composition does actually influence metabolic rate. More muscle burns more calories. That's why one should aim to train for hypertrophy (muscle mass) whilst making sure not to eat to much food. When you are overweight you don't want to lose the muscle you have, because it will become a cycle of losing weight (fat and muscle) and then gaining fat twice as fast because your metabolism went down the drain.
Now it makes sense why you should wait and really let your body rest after being ill. If you start exercising too soon, you're taking all the calories away from your immune system. The one time it really should get as much of them as possible.
Adequate rest is important for getting over many illnesses! I wonder if this explains the seemingly-growing selection of auto-immune diseases that our people have? Far too many calories gives you a little more 'daily energy' and that plus inadequate exercise maybe gives your immune system time to dig at little details and panic about your own cartilage or bone cells or whatever else?
@@axeldaguerre8838yeah everything is much more complex than appear, because the fact is that our bodies can fully control the metabolism in different scenarios and it uses this mechanism to maintain a fixed amount of calories expended per day, but what we cannot prove yet is how the priority of this energy shift happens, thus we can’t prevent what functions that your body will promove like “imune, adrenergic etc”
I’ve worked in the fitness industry the majority of my adult life and there’s a saying that ‘abs are made in the kitchen’ even when I was a PT I stressed to clients that you can’t outrun a bad diet and you do not need to train to lose weight you have to cut calories in a staggering controlled manner, consistently, overtime. But of course exercise is a very healthy thing to do!
Also, we are learning more and more about how both stress and hormones impact our weight and overall health. It's the easiest thing to say "just exercise more and eat better" when one doesn't know anything about other things going on in that person's body. Do they have PCOS and/or insulin resistance? Are their thyroids okay? Are they depressed and lack energy to cook and exercise? My husband is a vegetarian and does a loooot of exercise, while not overeating. I have hormone issues that took 25 years to be diagnosed and didn't use to exercise much due to lack of energy and pain and suffered from uncontrolled weight gain despite eating healthy. I got to hear it all about how I was just lazy, looking for excuses etc. and doctors wouldn't believe me either. Yet my husband is heavier than he wishes and can't seem to lose any weight. I haven't been able to lose any either, but my weight gain has stopped and I am starting to feel more energetic since I've started taking medications to help regulate my wonky hormones. This experience honestly helped him empathise more than anything else, because he now experiences firsthand how hard it is to lose weight even IF you exercise a lot. And how even sport and a good diet don't automatically equate weight loss. It may be easier for some, but not all and we'd all do well to keep in mind that we're all just humans doing our best.
Never understood that saying considering how easily it is disproven. Plenty of skinny people without pronounced abs, because they don't exercise. You just don't need actual abs exercises. Many others do the job, like leg lifts.
This is crazy lol. The body can't just spawn energy from the ether. If you go from walking 5k steps a day to 25k steps a day it can't do that on the same calorie expenditure as when you were on 5k
@@yocats9974 Right. Our bodies hate change. They will find ways to be efficient, often to the disappoint to those doing the same thing for a long time, then wondering why they have "plateaued". - Ziro out.
@@yocats9974 that is not true. by that logic, the calorie needs would never go up with more exercise. yet marathon runners often have calorie demands of 6000 calories+. you need energy for doing tasks, and when more tasks have to get done, the body needs more energy. it doesnt get "more efficient" to do 25k steps with the same amount of energy that it needs to do 5k. its laws of thermodynamics, its physics. what is true is that it FEELS easier after some time, because your cardiovaskular system and muscles adapt. but so will your hunger, since the body has to do way more work now which needs energy, and is like "gimme more food!" the notion that a big change in calories will at first use more cvalories, but then magically you will go back to your usual amount of calories before the change is utter insanity. isnt how it works at all. tasks need energy, and the body cant create that energy out of thin air. more tasks need more energy, there is no going back to "your usual calories" if you up the tasks significantly. like wth
@@ZiroTheGameplayCoder being efficient doesnt mean that we are doomed to plateau. its a numbers game. burn more than what you eat, and you lose fat. its literally that simple. for everyone. rare cases aside. and you, u probably aint one such case. if you plateau then your numbers arent right. can be done with more exercise or less food, doesnt matter. thats coming from one that does bodybuilding and loses/gains weight and fat regularly.
@@yocats9974You always need fuel to run an engine. Your liver or brain simply can't suddenly burn the same energy as your muscles do lifting 100 kg x10 just because your body adapts. It's insane to believe lifting heavu weights doesn't drastically increase calory burn
@@yocats9974thats not how energy works. Even if we assume your body was doing everything as efficiently as possible, doing more work required more energy. Your BMR will always have a bare minimum, any work on top of that has to be extra energy expended, there is no way around that.
Opposite for me, and for many other comments I'm seeing. Losing fat is a low concern for me, its mostly vanity. Having someone straightforwardly explain that while exercise wont help much with weight loss, it has massive improvements on mental health and quality of life, makes me way more motivated to exercise.
Um no... exercise is capitalism. When excersize it makes people eat more food which means more consumerism and more consumerism means more food is wasted that could have gone to africa. Liposuction is a solution but capitalism make doctor salary big so that no one would want to do the good thing. And then the doctor license is so bloated with bueracracy that making more doctors hurt the environment. And capitalism profits off of that. Universities are capitalism and are bad.
What about body recomposition and swamping fat for muscle to decrease the risk of diseases while having around the same weight and eating the same amount of calories?? 😊
"Regular physical activity isn't just about burning calories or losing weight, but about properly utilizing our body's energy budget to maintain optimal health and prevent the misallocation of energy to potentially harmful processes." Well done, Kurzgesagt!
Anecdote time. Once I got a job in highway construction after a long period of joblessness, where I essentially sat on my ass all day being depressed and playing video games. I wasnt fat, but I was terribly out of shape, and the job was: Wake up at 4 am, go out and pound sign posts so the roadwork had legal signage, then pound more posts for moving signage through the day, before collecting all the signage after everyone else called it quits, so we were the first out, last in, and to pound the posts, we used 16Lb sledgehammers. The work was to put it simply, brutal and beyond any workout I've ever done, full body high intensity workout after full body high intensity workout all day with maybe a minute to five minute breather. First two days I was okay, day three I woke up SORE. Like, every last little part of me hurt, i could barely move, but rather than let it beat me, I kept at it, and it was ridiculously hard, most other people would quit well before that point, but I pushed through. Day 7 I woke up, and I've never felt so incredibly good. No pain, pure energy, weirdly good mood, I was in the zone, and for the rest of the time i worked there I felt absolutely fantastic. To bring this to the point, theres value in a type of workout that only bears resemblance to anime characters, going not just till you fail, but again after a minute or two, then again, then again. It hurts, my god did it hurt, but if your will is stronger than your muscles, there's a prize at the end that just felt like living life properly. It felt like I was doing what my body was made to do and I'll never forget it. Also the money was insane, you bet we made overtime and double time, i made almost $12000 in 3 cheques at starting wage.
Double edged sword there, though. I've worked jobs that are brutal like that. Learned I could fall asleep standing up, beside a conveyor belt in a UPS logistics center where I was loading trucks. Laid down at the end of each day absolutely beat, but riding that high you get from hard, hard work. And yeah it's great, but if you go back again and again each day, without giving your body a chance to heal properly from the beating you're putting it through...that really starts to add up, you get joint issues and feel like shit all the time. Athletes call it overtraining syndrome, delivery drivers call it burnout. Difference is that athletes can afford to take a break, rest, and heal...
This actually makes a lot of sense and it explains a lot of things. Like how when I recently went on a trip and took parts in actitivies, I get a lot less frustrated and care much less about news that would have normally triggered me. So basically to live a mostly stress free life, you should excercise once in a while.
I think its not just about exercise , its about a certain balance and openess of body which is mantained by not being lazy We cant reject that exercise(most of the time) helps us positively even if it becomes easier for us ,
For people trying to lose weight its also important to remember that if you are exercising then your body will build muscle, so even if you are losing fat % the scales you're stepping on is not always a good indicator of progress as the muscle gain increases weight, don't let it discourage you if you are actively doing the right things and not seeing the number go down, you're focus should be becoming healthier not lighter!
AKA recomposition. Dr. Mike (Israetel) and I weigh the same, around 105kg (230lbs) and are the same height. Let's just say I look strong but not jacked, with a gut and dad bod, whereas Dr. Mike IS jacked af.
But you can gain only around 2 pounds of muscle a month as a male starting out and lose around 10 pounds of fat on a strict diet, its possible to still lose many pounds of fat while still gaining muscle
Plus the new muscle will claim the energy from the food intake and if tis maintained will simply burn more fuel over time. If you don't change your diet at all you have to lose fat.