Study after study confirms that exercise is good for your health and overall well-being. Being physically active offers a multitude of benefits—from helping to lower your risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes to reducing stress and improving your mood. But if weight loss is your goal, is just increasing the amount of physical activity you do enough to help send the scale in a downward direction?

When it comes to managing weight, research suggests that focusing on exercise alone is not enough. In fact, researchers who reviewed surveys of millions of Americans found that although physical activity increased between 2001 and 2009, obesity increased as well.

There isn’t one definitive reason why upping the amount of exercise you do is not enough on its own to help you lose weight. But these reasons help to explain why:

• When you exercise, you may eat more either because exercising increases your appetite or you feel like you’ve “earned” the extra calories.
• You may move less throughout the day since you figure you’ve already gotten your activity in with a 30- or 60-minute exercise session, so your total daily energy expenditure may not be as high as you think.
• Exercise accounts for less than 30% of your daily energy expenditure. Things like just breathing, digesting food and going about your daily activities burn the majority of your daily calories.
• Researchers suggest there might be a point where your body adapts to higher activity levels so you don’t burn energy at the same rate when you exercise more.
• When you exercise regularly, your body may try to hang onto fat for future energy needs.

Although you need to pay attention to your food intake in addition to exercising if weight loss is your goal, it’s important to remember that being physically active offers numerous health benefits that should not be ignored.

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