The more we engage in structured exercise training, the more we tend to cut back on daily non-exercise physical activities like riding a bike to work instead of driving, or taking the stairs instead of hopping on an elevator. This is the conclusion reached from a meta-study from the University of Copenhagen. According to the study's authors, this is an important consideration for anyone seeking to lose weight.
You may know the feeling. After a strenuous run or workout, you think you deserve an extra long rest on the couch, or an elevator ride instead of taking the stairs.
You are far from alone. A wide range of studies show that as people increase their amount of structured exercise, like going to the gym or running on the track, they tend to 'laze about' more when it comes to performing everyday physical activities that are not considered to be structured exercise.
"In 67% of the studies, we can see that people cut back on physical activities in their daily lives as compensation for more training. This includes walking less, cycling less and taking an elevator instead of the stairs," says Julie Marvel Mansfeldt, a graduate student at the University of Copenhagen's Department of Nutrition, Exercise and Sports (NEXS).
Mansfeldt is the lead author of a systematic review of 24 research studies, all of which describe people's levels of daily physical activities before and during interventions with various structured exercise programmes. The study is published in the journal Current Nutrition Reports.
One's level of regular physical activity seems to play a significant role in whether or not a person successfully loses weight.
"Losing weight is about changing the balance between the amount of energy you consume and the amount you expend. You can either change your diet to eat less or increase your level of physical activity," says Julie Marvel Mansfeldt, who continues:
"In theory, an energy deficit resulting from exercising more should result in weight loss. But in practice, we see that the two things are seldom linked and that weight loss from exercise is often less than expected. This indicates that some kind of compensatory mechanism must exist. Surprisingly and contrary to what many people think, we do not typically increase the amount of food we eat upon starting exercise training. This then suggests that we must be decreasing non-exercise physical activity, which refers to all the physical activities we do in our daily lives aside from the structured exercise."
One of the studies concludes that this decline made subjects lose 22% less weight than expected from their exercise training program.
