You cannot outrun a bad diet.
Typically used in the context of weight loss, it’s a catchy way for fitness folks to say
that regardless of the amount of cardio, crunches, and booty squats you do, you cannot lose weight
if you eat poorly, especially eating excess calories.
But hold on a minute, how accurate is this really?
If we examine the relevant scientific data, and look both directly at and beyond weight
loss, then the only thing this catchphrase seems to outrun is the truth.
Ehh, kind of.
In this video, we’ll go over this popular phrase and discover how, in some ways, outrunning
a bad diet can, in fact, be possible.
First, let’s be clear about weight loss.
If you are trying to lose weight, then your primary goal is creating an energy deficit,
or expending more energy, measured in calories, than you consume.
To achieve this, for most people, adjusting your diet is the superior and most efficient
method.
We’ve heard countless comparisons like this before: what’s better, skipping that second
scoop of Rocky Road ice cream or running 3 miles to burn if off?
Diet has an undeniably enormous impact, and all your exercise efforts can be effectively
wiped away by just a few “bad” dietary choices.
Thus, you cannot “outrun” a bad diet.
It’s wonderfully fitting and simple, isn’t it?
And it’s quite hard to imagine contesting this statement, up until you actually think
about it juuust a bit longer.
You cannot outrun a bad diet.
Hmm.
Wait, does that also apply to muscle, strength, or what if you’re just trying to maintain
your weight?
What about health?
And also, are we absolutely SURE we can’t lose weight with a bad diet?
Digging for answers to these questions is where the phrase starts falling a bit apart.
First, let’s look at muscle and strength, which seems to directly challenge this concept.
Exercise, especially resistance training, is the essential ingredient for muscle and
strength development.
And no matter how many protein shakes you guzzle down, a good diet will struggle to
build any significant muscle and strength without the necessary exercise-induced physiological
stimuli.
Now, a good diet paired with good exercise is the best-case scenario, especially a diet
high in protein and a surplus in calories.
But growth has shown to occur even without a good diet, including being in a calorie
deficit.
Now, to be fair, under these circumstances, the results are mostly seen in beginners with
little training experience, but improvements were observed in advanced trainers as well,
but to a noticeably smaller extent.
So, in this case, the roles are kinda reversed.
If you wanna build muscle and get stronger, it’s not that you cannot outrun a bad diet.
Instead, it’s more like you cannot “out chew” bad training habits.
That was good, wasn’t it?
But I get it, when talking about outrunning a bad diet, it’s usually in the context
of weight loss.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s generally more efficient to lose weight by eating fewer calories
than by burning more with exercise.
But saying that you absolutely cannot lose weight with a bad diet only holds well under
the assumption that your exercise is perpetually insufficient to overcome the calorie surplus
created by the bad diet.
Like, let’s say, for example, you’re in a 300-calories surplus by eating only junk
food, which most would agree is a bad diet.
What does it mean then if you burn an extra 400 calories doing cardio, which puts you
in a calorie deficit?
Does that mean your junk food diet is no longer bad?
Well, of course not, it’s still bad, but by doing the cardio, you can technically now
lose weight.
And we have seen studies show this, like in 2012, where adding 30 minutes of cardio a
day, overweight sedentary subjects lost on average 8 pounds over 13 weeks, even though
they were specifically instructed to eat without any dietary restrictions, yet still, their
calorie intake never really changed.
Now, could they have lost more weight if they changed their diet instead?
Hmm, probably.
But, the fact is that overweight and sedentary subjects did lose weight by adding exercise
and making zero dietary changes, which means they were effectively outrunning their so-called
“bad” diet.
If we do lose weight, we also have to consider what happens after.
Unfortunately, reports show that a staggeringly high 80 percent of people that lose weight
eventually gain it back.
But for the 20% that didn’t, one of the most common traits they all shared was, you
guessed it… exercise!
Now, weight regain is a huge issue that needs to be tackled in health and fitness and worthy
of its own video topic in the future.
But knowing that exercise is one of the key components to mitigate weight regain further
highlights its importance in the grand scheme of things.
Speaking of grand scheme of things, nothing is more important than doing the right things
for the sake of your overall health.
If we prioritize health, then certainly, a good diet is irrefutably imperative.
But, hypothetically speaking and for the sake of this topic, can exercise outrun any negative
health impacts caused by a bad diet?
This is where the almighty and completely original answer of “it depends” comes
into play.
First, some straightforward stuff.
Exercise and generally higher levels of fitness are strongly associated with reducing health
risk factors for things like hypertension, type 2 diabetes, depression, and even certain
cancers.
This happens independent of diet quality, making exercise unsurprisingly great for your
health.
But, the findings do get a bit more interesting in the assessment of mortality risks.
Mortality risks do generally reduce with exercise, but whether it outruns the effects of diet
is not so cut-and-dried.
We can elegantly elaborate this point with a 2022 prospective cohort study, where the
researchers found that going from little to no added physical activity to about 30 to
60 minutes of daily moderate to vigorous physical activity, strongly reduced cardiovascular
disease, cancer, and all-cause associated mortality risks.
The interesting part is that when people engaged in 30 to 60 minutes of daily physical activity
while having a poor-quality diet, they observed lower CVD and all-cause associated mortality
risks compared to people eating a high-quality diet but exercised very little.
Which kind of makes you think that, hey, in terms of mortality, maybe we can outrun a
bad diet after all!
Well, not so fast.
For the sake of our health, we don’t want just better but the BEST possible outcome.
In that case, the findings showed that the GREATEST mortality risk reductions only occurred
in those with a high-quality diet paired with anywhere between 30 minutes to 2 hours of
daily moderate to vigorous physical activity.
So, that means a high-quality diet is absolutely necessary to reduce risk at the highest level
but so is exercise.
So, yes we’re not outrunning a bad diet, but we also can’t rely on diet alone.
Now, so far, I’ve been mostly making the case supporting the idea that, in many ways,
you can truly outrun a bad diet.
But now, I wanna present you with a different set of data showing people that adamantly
believe you cannot outrun a bad diet might have some scientific leg to stand on.
And that data is on something called compensation.
Oftentimes, weight loss research employing exercise interventions observed a compensation
effect, where subjects spontaneously consumed more calories than they normally do, seemingly
compensating for the calories burned from exercise.
Of course, if you do that, you’ll have a much harder time losing weight and outrunning
your diet.
The reason this compensation occurs isn’t really clear.
Some research suggests there is an acute uptick in hedonistic drive towards fatty and sweet
foods after exercise.
Some suggest exercise-induced alterations to appetite-regulating hormones like acylated
ghrelin and GLP-1 that can influence hunger ratings.
Some even attempt to link it to genetics.
But overall, none of them are definitive.
Fortunately, people on average only compensate about 30% of the exercise-induced calorie
expenditure, which doesn’t seem too bad…
until we look at the shockingly high variation between individual subjects.
Some subjects might not compensate anything or even eat less, whereas some compensate
everything or even overcompensate and eat more.
In some studies, like a study in 2005, this variability in compensation is reflected in
the clear variability in weight outcomes between individual subjects, which also shows that
compensation tends to be higher in women than men.
We wouldn’t know any of this if we only focused on the initial 30% average.
So, what do we do with this information?
Well, some researchers have introduced the idea that, for the sake of tailoring the best
personalized weight loss strategies, we should identify people as either compensators, people
that tend to increase intake with exercise, or non-compensators, people that tend to maintain
or decrease intake with exercise.
In that case, your thoughts on outrunning a bad diet can be heavily influenced by your
classification.
If you’re a compensator, you might think it’s impossible to outrun a bad diet.
But if you’re a non-compensator, then you’re probably wondering why people aren’t outrunning
their bad diets like you are.
Tricky, isn’t it?
Our bodies are just so dang weird.
And now, some final thoughts.
I’ll be honest, making this video was a bit tough and frustrating.
And it wasn’t about the science, although there was plenty of data to comb through,
but about how I presented the science.
We can see now that things kind of swing in both directions, and I was a bit worried that
people will only pick up the parts they wanted to hear.
The last thing I wanted is any of you leaving this video with either the impression of “exercise
is so awesome that you can eat whatever you want!” or “exercise is a waste of time
‘cause you just compensate all of it away!”
The thing is, it was never about whether you can or cannot outrun a bad diet.
Exercise is clearly very beneficial, but it does not allow complete freedom in your dietary
choices.
At the same time, you end up leaving a lot of benefits on the table if you choose to
focus on diet alone.
In the end, the boring boring statement of “try to improve both your exercise and diet”
is still the best advice possible.
And if that middle-of-the-road answer doesn’t satisfy you, then welcome to life.
If you stuck through the whole video, then first, thank you, but I would also looooove
to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree with the statement, your take on
data, everything.
Let me know in the comments!
Other than that, If you enjoyed this video, please give it
a dietary thumbs up and share it with you exercise-loving friends.
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As always, thank you for watching and don’t forget to get your protein!