How to lose weight?: (Diet?) (Exercise?)
How to lose weight? Diet to lose weight? Exercise to lose weight?
Losing weight healthily could be made up of 3 main tasks:
- A diet to lose weight.
- Exercise to lose weight.
- Adequate rest.
This article does not focus on providing a specific diet or a complete plan, nor on a specific exercise routine, but rather on showing the guidelines that should be considered to structure a weight loss plan.
What this article is trying to do is show what works for losing weight, both what works in terms of diet and exercise.
The information presented may be more focused on long-term healthy weight maintenance than on weight loss itself.
The article includes various investigations on the topic (approximately +20 references), most of them recent.
(Translated with Google translator) Original article in Spanish: How to lose weight?: (Diet?) (Exercise?)
Index
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This guide shows specific steps to lose weight, and although it presents information on maintaining weight after loss, it does not focus on that aspect as much as on losing weight.
How to lose weight?
To lose weight, two things could be done (to save time): Find what works and discard what doesn't work.
Something we can mention is that weight gain, according to experts, is due to excessive calorie consumption (more calories than necessary). This would be the case, at least, in 100% of cases of overweight and obesity.
This is something basic, due to the simple principle of physics that states that matter and energy do not arise from nothing in the universe as we observe it, but are transformed. Food and the consequent fatness that it could produce is the result of transforming food (matter) into energy and materials that are part of the consumer's body.
However, it could also be observed that there are people who consume more calories than they expend and, yet, are neither overweight nor obese. (We will expand on this later in the topic).
So the idea can be raised that eating more calories than necessary will not necessarily make people fat (as studies and more suggest). People gain weight because they store more calories than those who do not gain weight, not because they are burning fewer calories than they consume.
For a long time it was tried to explain this way, that people who do not gain weight are because they burned more calories, but this is being contradicted by studies on the matter.
But, for now let's stick with what works and doesn't work:
Calorie deficit diet (doesn't work):
Calorie deficit can be an effective way (perhaps the most effective) to lose weight temporarily, but it is an ineffective and even counterproductive way in the long term (to maintain the lost weight).
What I mention has been raised before and can be considered one of the main reasons why most attempts by humans to lose weight fail.
A recent study suggests that one of the reasons for the inefficiency that losing weight using a hypocaloric (low-calorie) diet produces in the human body is its inability to produce changes in the brain of the obese.
Obese people suffer from many internal physical changes, not just external appearance, including hormonal changes (such as low levels of androgens such as testosterone, or increased estrogen levels in men; or high levels of testosterone in women); one of those changes has to do with your brain.
The way the brain of obese people operates seems to be different from that of the rest and this influences them being obese.
However, low-calorie diets, in addition to not increasing testosterone, produce hormonal changes that are counterproductive to maintaining weight, changes that on the contrary promote weight gain, such as an increase in the hormone ghrelin (called the hunger hormone).
When the body has a lot of ghrelin, it simply increases appetite. This occurs when low-calorie diets are consumed.
In some cases obesity can be the result of high levels of ghrelin, this being a case closely associated with genetics. One study linked the FTO gene, a gene associated with obesity that is responsible for regulating ghrelin, when it comes to the obesity risk variant of this gene, with high levels of ghrelin . Which could lead to an increase in food intake.
Interestingly, obese people do not eat more because they have a lot of ghrelin, as some might think, in fact obese people may have low levels of ghrelin compared to non-obese people (this could be related to the low levels of growth hormone in obese people). In contrast, obese people tend to have high levels of leptin (an appetite suppressing hormone).
The problem with obese people is usually that they are resistant to leptin, this may explain why they have insatiable appetites. In addition to other intestinal hormonal changes and adipose tissue (fatty tissue).
When "leptin resistance" is mentioned it is similar to the case with "insulin resistance." An inability of the body to respond to leptin.
However, once we observe that endocrine (hormonal) factors are related to obesity, we cannot infer that they are necessarily the cause of obesity (with exceptions such as hypothyroidism and others).
In fact, many of these hormonal changes found in obese people could be reversed simply by losing weight (the right way).
But when people are obese, even if they lose weight, they may have difficulty maintaining a balance between muscle mass and fat. One of the main reasons may be low testosterone which negatively impacts the body's ability to build muscle, and low amount of human growth hormone (HGH) which influences the increase in muscle mass and reduction of body fat.
With a low-calorie diet, these hormones would probably continue to be low, which would contribute to weight loss with little muscle mass and more adipose tissue (fat) than would be healthy. Although it could reduce total body fat. (Let's take into consideration that body fat percentage is also a measure of health and not just losing weight.)
Additionally, as mentioned, low-calorie diets contribute to increased ghrelin.
An interesting fact to mention is that there are studies that suggest (linked above) that anorexics have higher levels of ghrelin than obese people and those of normal weight. Therefore, the thinness of anorexics would not necessarily be due to a hormonal cause, but rather, it seems, it is often psychological in nature.
Conversely, we could consider that one of the main causes of obesity could also be psychological in nature. However, let us take into consideration the information stated above, that the brain of obese people is different and that it influences obesity.
By following a low-calorie diet, no beneficial changes would be achieved in this regard. The hormonal problems of obesity would not be corrected and could even worsen. Furthermore, it could be thought that from the conscious side the individual interprets the low-calorie diet as something negative, which would make it difficult to commit to it in the long term.
On the contrary, by increasing ghrelin as a result of the low-calorie diet to lose weight, what will be achieved is a possible increase in the size of the stomach . This is because ghrelin increases the secretion of human growth hormone in the stomach, which contributes to the increase in size of this digestive organ.
By increasing the size of the stomach and other organs, the ability to ingest food increases.
As a result, it seems that in most cases the hypocaloric diet (forced reduction of calories) is determined towards failure when it comes to long-term weight loss, and would only be an effective measure to lose weight punctually with the secondary adverse effects of its implementation.
Calorie replacement diet (it works):
Calorie replacement (or calorie replacement diet) appears to work for maintaining body weight, although it may not be helpful enough for weight loss.
High-calorie diets are associated with the biggest causes of weight gain.
However, not all calorie sources are created equal, which is why calorie replacement can be an option that works to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
Calorie replacement consists of changing processed foods (refined flours, refined sugar, fried foods) for healthier foods (whole flours and other whole grain products, whole grains such as cereals and beans, lower consumption of meat and higher consumption of fruits and vegetables). .
Although this dietary approach is not the most directly effective for weight loss, it appears to be the most effective for weight maintenance.
This can be explained, in part, by the fact that some products high in carbohydrates and fats can increase the risk of obesity, especially ultra-processed ones .
Explanations between energy balance and the carbohydrate and insulin model are currently considered. If the cause of obesity is ingesting more calories than are burned, or if it is an inadequate use of energy where it is first stored in the form of fat and then what is left over is used for basic necessary functions of the body, therefore which increases the individual's need to ingest more calories to be able to fulfill the basic functions of his or her body.
Low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diets can reduce the respiration of adipose tissue mitochondria . Mitochondria are small organisms found inside cells (they are part of the body), in charge of energy issues. Mitochondria are responsible for generating most of the chemical energy to activate the biochemical reactions of cells.
The reduction of mitochondrial respiration in adipose tissue could lead to weight gain by promoting the increase in fat deposits, instead of their oxidation (burning).
Although the calorie replacement diet may contain high amounts of carbohydrates compared to other diets (especially the keto approach), these diets would be based on foods not only rich in carbohydrates, but also in other caloric nutrients, such as proteins and healthy fats. ; in addition to non-caloric substances such as dietary fiber.
The calorie replacement diet would have the advantage that it can be easy to follow psychologically, it is not a typical "starvation" diet and it will not produce the side effects of low-calorie diets, and even diets focused on the consumption of fats and meats. .
With the drawback, to mention, that perhaps on its own it is not enough to lose weight, although it could be enough to maintain it. However, it is proposed that with exercise and other healthy habits, it may be the most useful diet to lose weight permanently (not gain weight again).
High fat diet (doesn't work):
A diet considered probably effective for weight loss is hyperlipidic (high-fat) diets.
High-fat diets, or keto diets, could (like the low-calorie diet) help with occasional weight loss, but they would not help maintain the lost weight in the long term.
Many people consider the keto diet as the most effective for losing weight without going hungry, some postulating that it is advisable to consume few carbohydrates to lose weight, since the obesity, carbohydrates and insulin model postulates that a high carbohydrate intake leads to a excess insulin secretion leading to increased body fat storage and calorie intake.
This leads some to think that if carbohydrate intake is reduced by replacing them with fats (as occurs in keto diets), fewer calories could be ingested.
Although the premise may seem logical, the reality does not seem to be that in all cases. One study tested a plant-based diet versus a high-fat keto diet; The result was that the vegetarian diet produced a greater clinically positive effect on weight loss in relation to the amount of calories ingested compared to the high-fat, low-carbohydrate keto diet.
Doctors usually recommend reducing about 500 calories from the diet to lose weight, however the vegetarian diet resulted in more than 500 fewer calories consumed per day compared to the keto diet.
This doesn't mean that the keto diet is ineffective for weight loss, but it does mean (according to the study) that the vegetarian diet is clinically better.
The issue here seems to be that healthy carbohydrates, healthy plant foods, were used instead of refined ones.
Many followers of keto diets seem to make the mistake of not distinguishing between plant-based foods that are more natural and those that are refined, processed or ultra-processed.
Additionally, another study conducted with mice found that high-fat diets promote leptin resistance in these obese rodents.
As you may remember, leptin resistance is a condition where the body does not respond adequately to the signals of this hormone that tells it to stop eating.
The mice in the study gained weight on the high-fat diet. But, the process involves stages of change over time; it does not produce effects when it begins with a hyperlipidic (high-fat) diet.
At times, effects were observed in a matter of weeks, but if these effects were to occur in humans, perhaps we would not be able to specify how long they would take to occur. The metabolisms of humans and mice are remarkably different; a mouse, on average, lives about 2 years. Perhaps the effects of a high-fat diet on leptin resistance, if they occur in humans, will take years to be observed.
On the other hand, a keto diet could hardly be followed in the long term, but vegetarian diets (although some may think not) seem like they could do it better.
When we talk about vegetables, we usually think of green foods that are not very tasty, however, whole wheat bread, brown rice, oats, stews, peppers, garlic, onions, tomatoes (with which prepare sauces), fruits (which could act as sweeteners and even natural coloring), are foods of plant origin.
But, here we do not promote a strictly vegetarian diet, although it is richer in healthy carbohydrates than in fats, and even in proteins (it can be mentioned that foods such as whole wheat bread and brown rice, like stews, are rich in protein. vegetable origin).
Exercise (it works) (but not everything works) (and perhaps the reasons are different than previously thought):
It has long been considered that exercise is one of the best ways to lose weight, although some recommendations indicate that exercise alone may not be useful enough for weight loss in most cases.
Within the topic of exercise, it has been suggested that only cardiovascular exercise is useful for losing weight significantly. Strength exercise would only be useful in achieving this goal if combined with cardiovascular exercise and/or diet (especially both, combined).
The fact that strength exercise does not promote weight loss, and does not even contribute to fat loss, on its own, although it does contribute to muscle gain, means that it is a non-priority option when it comes to losing weight.
A simple explanation lies in the metabolic condition that is stimulated by resistance exercise, which is anabolism. Anabolism consists of generating matter (molecules) from food. Although this metabolic process could increase caloric expenditure at rest, in reality the expenditure will be little and, mainly, that energy is used to increase body mass.
Body mass has a weight, therefore an increase in metabolism in an anabolic sense (mass formation) leads to weight gain.
You could lose weight by doing strength exercise, mainly with a low-calorie diet, but this weight loss would depend on the diet and not on strength exercise. However, as mentioned before, the low-calorie diet is not a recommended option for long-term weight loss.
On the other hand, there are those who point to increasing muscle mass as a result of strength exercise, because muscle mass is more metabolically active than fat. But, although that is correct, suggesting that increasing muscle will help you lose weight is a myth .
First, muscle has a weight and by volume it is heavier than fat (it weighs more while taking up less space). Increasing muscle could reduce measurements if you can lose fat, but it would not help you lose weight.
The metabolism that increases with increasing muscle mass is anabolic, which contributes to weight gain, and the amount of extra calories burned by muscle compared to fat is too few to pose a clinically significant effect. (Calories used in an anabolic process).
We believe that most people could not build that much muscle, and that in the average case the extra calories burned by increased metabolism as a result of increased muscle mass could be easily recovered from the diet, so much so that muscle gains of months could recover calorically a day after the gains with things as simple as eating half a banana.
On the other hand, in addition to the idea that the metabolism can be influenced (accelerated) to lose weight (be it with exercise, diet, or increasing muscle mass) being considered a myth, recent studies also suggest that it is a myth that metabolism is the main cause of weight gain .
Metabolism appears to be constant throughout the biological life of the individual , with no major variations between adolescents, young men and older adults. And, although one individual may have a higher or lower metabolism than another, no link has been found between a lower metabolism and weight gain.
That is, studies suggest that spending more calories or having a higher energy expenditure does not determine a low body weight, nor does having a lower energy expenditure determine an increase in body weight.
The highest metabolisms are found in young children, but from 1 year old onwards the metabolism is reduced by 3% annually, so by the time they reach 14 years old the metabolism would not be so different from that of an adult. Upon reaching +-20 years, the metabolism reaches the adult metabolism, which the person will have until the age of +-60 years. After +-60 years of age, the metabolism will decrease by 0.7% annually.
That is, the metabolic tendency of human beings throughout almost their entire biological life is downward, and only babies have metabolic acceleration, from newborn to 1 year old. In that case, it would reach 50% more than the adult metabolism that would be had at +-20 years and onwards. And, in addition, it will gain (if it is a healthy baby) more than 100% of its body weight from newborn to 1 year.
Exceptions could be diseases, such as hyperthyroidism or cancer , that could accelerate metabolism (speed up cellular processes, in the case of cancer, of mutant cells).
This is in line with a recent study carried out with African men dedicated to artisanal hunting. These men are thinner than Americans, on average, but the reason is not that they burn more calories daily, even though they exercise more.
The Hadza when engaged in hunting or foraging activities can burn several more calories than the average American city man; But when the number of total calories burned over a 24-hour period was calculated, it was practically the same amount of calories.
In fact, this suggests that the Hadza, despite being on average thinner, have a lower basal metabolic rate (BMR), which could explain why, despite being more physically active, they burn practically the same amount of calories in 24 hours as the Hadza. average Americans.
The same study experimented with animals, including the group called primates, and found that there was no significant difference between the caloric expenditure of these animals in captivity and those in the wild, despite the fact that the former could be noticeably more inactive than the animals. seconds.
This study also suggests that only excessive sedentary lifestyle could cause lower calorie burning. For example, TV addicts would burn about 200 fewer calories than those who perform basic activities, however, the latter would not differ much from those who exercise in terms of calorie burning (higher intensity activity).
As a result, the principal investigator of the study suggests that exercise can be useful for many things related to health, so he does not recommend stopping exercise, but that perhaps it would not be useful for losing weight.
However, there are other studies that point to the benefits of exercise for weight loss that have nothing to do with caloric expenditure.
One study found that physical exercise can improve leptin resistance , a condition, as mentioned before, that is present in obese people. By improving this condition (leptin resistance), exercise can contribute to a reduction in appetite, and even a reduction in blood pressure as a result of a decrease in leptin levels (which are high in obese people).
When there is resistance to leptin, leptin levels increase in the body, which has been associated with increased blood pressure in those suffering from diet-induced obesity (high-calorie diet).
Also in the study on the Hadza it is mentioned that the Ache Indians of Paraguay had lower levels of leptin and testosterone than Western men. This could be due to their long-term physical activity.
Leptin itself would not be an anabolic hormone, but when the condition known as leptin resistance occurs, the situation would become an uncontrolled anabolic process based on calorie consumption and fat accumulation.
Leptin warns when you have eaten enough and thus you stop eating and accumulating fat. When this does not occur, what would be an imbalance between anabolism and catabolism occurs that leads to the accumulation of fat (hypertrophy of adipose tissue).
This could also explain why in the study with the Hadza it was found that they expended 2600 calories and consumed 2600 calories, the same amount of calories they expended, without exceeding. We are talking about people who did not count calories but ate according to the natural functioning of their bodies.
Testosterone is a hormone considered anabolic which would be involved in muscle hypertrophy. Although muscle has been linked to greater health than fat, hypertrophy could also lead to weight gain.
This may be a notable contribution of long-duration cardiovascular exercise in reducing body weight, apart from burning calories, considering that recent research points to leptin as the main hormone related to body weight, and resistance to leptin as the main cause of obesity.
The intestinal microbiota is considered to be related to obesity, so improving the microbiota could contribute to reducing obesity (among other health improvements).
It can also improve high insulin spikes, which some studies show has a causal relationship to obesity . For example, one study suggests that walking just about 2 minutes after eating may reduce insulin spikes.
In this study, it is proposed that walking for just over 2 minutes every 20 to 30 minutes, for 8 hours, could have a clinically significant effect on hyperinsulinemia and other health risk markers.
Another easy exercise that could be useful for this insulin issue, because it is so easy and effective, would be soleus extensions .
In addition, another study on the benefits of physical exercise suggested that physical exercise can help a healthier distribution of adipose tissue (fat). Physical exercise would encourage the body to store more fat in the gynoid shape (in the thighs and hips), at least in women, instead of storing it in the visceral area.
Visceral fat is the one most related to cardiometabolic diseases (hypertension, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, high cholesterol) and respiratory problems. These conditions can be serious and even chronic (treatable but not curable).
In addition, visceral (abdominal) fat is the one most often linked to obesity, largely contributing to giving an obese appearance.
Also, physical exercise can improve insulin resistance and also reduce gynoid fat (in the thighs and hips), as well as, according to the study, promote an increase in the soleus muscle.
The study suggests that physical exercise (in this case it seems that of a cardiovascular or aerobic nature), can significantly (although small) reduce the body mass index (BMI) in weeks.
These adaptations induced by aerobic exercise, although they have nothing to do with a certain calorie burning, seem to contribute significantly to healthy weight loss.
Furthermore, another study reports that combined training (strength and cardiovascular) could contribute to the activity of thermogenic fat in patients with type 2 diabetes . However, to notice these possible benefits of improved thermogenesis induced by combined exercise to lose weight, two scenarios would have to be considered: 1. Finding yourself in a place cold enough to be exposed to the cold for a period of time, which is not usually the case. be little (this excludes warm and tropical climates). 2. Have type 2 diabetes.
In accordance with this information and in accordance with current recommendations on the subject, the physical exercise useful for losing weight is aerobic or cardiovascular, but not strength exercise.
Strength exercise can be useful (as some studies suggest) to avoid losing muscle mass when losing weight, however, this is when you lose weight on a low-calorie diet.
There is no indication that a non-hypocaloric diet (as a calorie replacement) requires non-cardiovascular exercise to maintain muscle mass.
Finally, I personally believe that metabolism does have something to do with it, but not with the burning of calories, but with how those calories are used.
I propose that strength exercise only stimulates anabolism, a type of metabolism that leads to the gain or maintenance of body weight. While cardio leads to catabolism, a metabolism that does not use building blocks (such as the proteins that make up muscles), but 100% of the calories are burned.
Even so, hypertrophy of adipose tissue would be linked to a sedentary lifestyle and not to any form of exercise (neither strength nor cardio) (although weight gains linked to sedentary lifestyle as an isolated factor would be poor). But, it is proposed that strength exercise, by itself, is useless to reverse this anabolic process.
Therefore, stimulating catabolism with cardiovascular exercises could be beneficial (hypothetically) in the long term to induce the body to reverse the hypertrophy of adipose tissue. Although this could also affect muscle hypertrophy.
Cardiovascular exercise would induce changes that lead to changes that allow you to better face the next training sessions, just as strength exercise induces hypertrophy for the same purpose.
Count calories burned and calories ingested (does not work):
Counting calories or knowing how many calories could be burned in each exercise can be minimally useful and even almost useless for losing weight.
As mentioned before, a person can burn calories occasionally by exercising and at the end of the day (24 hours) have burned the same amount of calories as someone who is sedentary.
This 24 hours may be an approximation, not something precise. For example, there are experts who estimate the amount of calories burned by athletes in the middle of competitions, up to 10 thousand calories a day, consuming only about 3000 calories. A calorie deficit of 7 thousand calories.
Obviously, in these cases, they will lose weight (calorie deficit causes weight loss). But, this would be unsustainable in the long term, it is only punctual, so once the competition is over, it is understood that they will take breaks and adequate nutrition to recover and also regain the lost weight (which they lost punctually in competition).
Here recovery may take more than 24 hours, but if it is not done the athlete could die.
If a person burns more calories daily than they consume and reaches the point of not having enough body fat to maintain their body, it is understood that they would die. Therefore, this is unsustainable in the long term, especially in the case of such thin athletes with little body fat.
However, there are athletes who can be in competitions up to 250 days a year. In this case, the fact that these men do not die is also due, in part, to the fact that their total energy expenditure (GET) is partially reduced, which increases their resistance to long sporting events , and that they cannot spend more than 3 times calories from your basal metabolism.
For example, a professional cyclist (one of the most demanding cardiovascular endurance sports) could have a basal metabolism (BMR) of approximately 2,000 calories per day. Assuming that cyclists on average could weigh 70 kilos and assuming that they have a basal metabolism higher than that of a normal person.
On average, a professional cyclist (weighing 70 kilos) could not burn more than 6 thousand total calories per day. These are a lot of calories for a human, but let's consider that a cyclist in competition can consume more than 3 thousand calories a day and that on average while they are active professional cyclists they can consume about 6 thousand calories a day.
In the aforementioned study, it was indicated that in week 20 of marathon competitions, total energy expenditure was reduced by an average of 1,224 calories per day.
This is part of the explanation why these athletes do not lose weight indefinitely until they die, but instead stabilize at a weight. In nature many animals, especially reptiles, are considered to have the ability to stop or reduce their metabolic functions, allowing them to survive much longer without sufficient calories.
Of course, humans have a limit, as do animals, and therefore they could not remain in a caloric deficit indefinitely, because they would die. However, many animals, once the caloric deficit ends (including mammals such as the polar bear) begin to quickly regain the lost weight.
There are several studies that suggest that after exercise the body can begin to take energy compensation measures (energy efficiency) to compensate for the calories lost during exercise. So in reality, in terms of weight loss, they would lose less weight than expected, because in practice, in the long term, they would have lost fewer calories by exercising than would normally be expected.
That would be in ordinary people, not in trained athletes. It is estimated that a normal person would recover more than half (almost 63%) of the calories burned with cardiovascular exercise in 12 weeks.
A study suggests that depending on the degree of intensity (low or moderate-high), exercise could reduce caloric expenditure more or less. The higher the intensity, the greater the restriction of caloric expenditure , to compensate for the calories burned with exercise.
This does not mean that fewer calories are necessarily burned in the hours after exercise when performing intense exercise, compared to when performing low-intensity exercise, but rather that the total caloric expenditure on a regular basis would not be different.
As intense exercise burns a greater amount of calories during execution, to maintain the stability of post-exercise energy expenditure, measures to restrict calorie burning are greater.
In the case of burning calories through exercise, a superficial observation could give us a more realistic idea about the matter.
There are also athletes who, although they burn a lot of calories, would be practically impossible to attribute their (non-obese) body weight to the amount of calories burned with exercise considering the amount of calories they ingest. Many high-performance athletes seem to eat thousands of calories more than they expend daily in their workouts along with the basic calories they need based on their body composition.
In fact, even in the case of athletes with a high calorie burn, such as cyclists, perhaps they also consume more calories than they burn, when prolonged periods are considered. Although its extra calorie consumption is less than in other sports.
Let us also consider that these men are highly trained, which implies that on average they have a lower caloric expenditure performing physical activities for which they are trained (although it could be higher in total due to the greater effort). This is due to adaptation factors.
But the core point here is not how useless it could be to focus on the issue of calories, but rather the psychological stress that this could represent, especially when counting calories in food, which could cause apathy to continue. with the weight loss plan.
Sleep properly (it works):
Lack of sleep has been linked to weight gain and a recent study that reviews various research and studies on the subject indicates that the quality and quantity of sleep influences whether more or fewer calories are consumed .
According to the study, people who sleep less, or have lower quality sleep, tend to consume more calories, which can cause them to gain weight.
In medical terms, you should sleep for at least 7 hours each night . That is, the time and schedule of sleep should be spent at night. Daytime sleep, even if it is equal in quantity to nighttime sleep, would be inferior in quality.
Darkness is necessary for the body to produce melatonin, a hormone that may help you sleep better.
A recent study using laboratory mice found that melatonin can lose weight , reduce insulin resistance, adipocyte hypertrophy, inflammation and hepatic steatosis (fatty liver) induced by a high-fat diet, and energy expenditure.
The study concludes that melatonin helps prevent obesity and improves the body's ability to use fats as an energy source.
In addition, sleeping well is important , not only for losing weight, but for other health and well-being issues, especially of a cognitive nature.
Conclusion
Losing weight is not an easy task (and that's not just saying it), the situation is such that it is considered that the vast majority will fail in their attempt in the long term.
Although it seems that the fitness marketing industry has been responsible for giving the idea that all these objectives can be achieved, the reality is different.
Many people who attend gyms and achieve physical changes are thin people, who have not suffered from obesity, and who seek to increase their muscle mass for aesthetic reasons.
The majority of obese people will not be able to lose weight significantly, and many (the majority, again), even if they do, will end up regaining the lost weight.
Gym exercises are not, regularly, to lose weight but to gain weight (muscle).
To lose weight consistently (in the long term), cardiovascular exercise is required that stimulates the body, as weights would do in the case of muscular hypertrophy, to adopt adaptive changes that allow it to perform physical activity with increasing ease.
To lift heavy loads of weight, the body does not require, as an adaptive measure, to reduce its body volume (an example of this is many competitive weightlifters, with those with an obese appearance being the ones who lift the most weight compared to bodybuilders).
Physical activity that leads to weight loss should also not be focused on caloric expenditure (calories burned), although in this regard aerobic exercise is superior to strength exercise (anaerobic).
The objective of the exercise would be to stimulate or induce the body to make adaptive changes that facilitate its execution, as occurs with strength exercise that can induce the body to muscle hypertrophy.
Finally, the diet should focus on a state of healthy nutrition, but one that does not lead to hunger. And, both exercise and diet should be combined with adequate rest (night sleep of at least 7 hours).
So: Exercise + Diet + Rest = Weight loss and/or weight maintenance (if you are at an appropriate weight).
Yes, similar to the bodybuilding process, but in this case it would have to be focused on the goal of losing weight.