But that doesn’t mean that exercise can’t help you lose weight or change your diet.
Every January, millions of people make a New Year’s resolution to lose weight, eat healthier, or both. To achieve these goals, many people start intense exercise programs that require too much exercise, leading to fitness burnout or injury. Overtraining can actually prevent you from losing weight.
As a health neuroscientist, I have been studying the underlying brain and cognitive mechanisms of dietary behavior, and the role that exercise plays in helping people improve their diet for over a decade.
Energy and exercise
The truth is that you can’t simply expect to exercise a poor diet and lose weight (if that’s your goal). Humans are very good at saving energy and are consumed by exercise by consuming more calories later in the day or by being less physically active throughout the rest of the day. Explain the calories.
That said, you can use exercise to lose weight and maintain weight loss, but you can’t offset calories burned.
If you are looking to lose weight, the only way to do that is to control your calorie intake. The best and most effective way to do that is to limit the consumption of super-processed foods (typical “junk food” and fast food diets). Even if you’re not trying to lose weight, reducing the consumption of super-processed foods can help your mental and physical health.
Regular exercise can easily do this by improving the brain and cognitive processes that help regulate junk food consumption and reducing stress. And the best part is just 20 minutes of fast walking, everything you need to get a beneficial effect.
Reasons for overdose of junk food
Do not overeat candies, cookies, cakes, chips, or drink sweet soda. A diet high in these super-processed foods can cause weight gain, but it is very difficult to resist.
Super-processed junk food is designed to be as delicious and rewarding as possible. Exposure to media ads and real food (for example, the chocolate bar in the grocery store checkout lane) increases local brain activity associated with reward processing. Brain activity associated with this reward results in increased appetite and willingness to eat, even when we are not hungry.
The brain region known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) reduces activity in these reward areas, reduces food cravings, and initiates the cognitive processes necessary to consciously control food choices. Helps limit the consumption of super-processed foods.
When examining brain responses using functional brain imaging, neuroscientists find that increased activity in dlPFC controls food cravings by reducing activity in the reward area of the brain, making them healthier. Showed to help you choose the right food. Conversely, when dlPFC activity diminishes, it struggles to resist the temptation of attractive junk food and consumes more snack food.
Exercise can help regulate food consumption
Exercise increases the plasticity of the brain. This is the ability of the brain to adapt its functions based on new inputs. By increasing the plasticity of the brain, we can easily change our habits and lifestyles. More and more evidence shows that regular physical activity can enhance prefrontal cortex brain function and improve cognition.
Increased prefrontal cortex brain function and cognition evoked by these exercises facilitates regulation or restriction of junk food consumption. And you can see the effect with just 20 minutes of moderate intensity exercise.
I have shown that after 20 minutes of moderate intensity exercise, people do not consume much of super-processed foods such as chips and milk chocolate. (In our study, this was a lively walk at about 3.5 mph on a treadmill with a slight slope). Studies have also shown that both a single session of high-intensity interval training or a 12-week high-intensity aerobic exercise program can reduce your preference and appetite for high-calorie junk food. Similar effects can be seen with moderate aerobic exercise and strength training.
The key point here is that regular exercise improves the ability of people to resist the temptation of these attractive foods by reducing the amount of junk food they want and improving their brain function and cognition. It means that you can make it. This makes it easier to limit the consumption of these foods to achieve healthier eating and weight loss goals.
Exercise also helps reduce stress
When people are stressed, the body releases a hormone called cortisol. This activates what is known as a fight or flight or reaction. When cortisol levels are high, the brain thinks it needs more fuel and increases its thirst for super-processed foods that contain sugar or salt.
Participation in regular or single exercise reduces perceived stress and cortisol levels. Exercise also helps reduce the consumption of unhealthy drinks and food when people are under stress.
Stress can also affect brain function. Studies show that looking at food photos, stress can reduce prefrontal cortex activity and increase activity in the reward area of the brain. This makes it difficult to resist the temptation of attractive junk food.
By offsetting the effects of stress on prefrontal cortex brain function, exercise makes it easier to maintain your goal of reducing the consumption of a healthier diet or junk food. A 20-minute active walk helps restore the prefrontal cortex from temporary changes in activity, such as those seen when people are under stress.
The next time you feel stressed, try walking for about 20 minutes. It can prevent you from eating stress.
What kind of exercise is best?
Researchers are often asked what is the best exercise and how much exercise should be done.
At the end of the day, the best exercise is something you enjoy and can sustain over time. High-intensity interval training (HIIT), aerobic exercise, meditation and mindfulness, yoga, and strength training all help improve your diet by targeting frontal lobe brain function and reducing stress.
If you are starting a new exercise routine this year, make it easier, be kind to yourself, listen to your body, and keep in mind that a little can help a lot.
He is a postdoctoral fellow at The Brain and Mind Institute in the Faculty of Psychology at Western University, Canada. This article was first published on The Conversation.
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