Exercise won't make you thin?

It's hard not to be entertained by this kind of finding, even though it shouldn't be necessary to keep, "finding" it (out). Exercises regularly yet weight remains stable, returning back to the beginning at the end of every week, month, whatever? No way! D'you really mean you just don't use up your body, whittling it to a stub?

But the past few years of obesity research show that the role of exercise in weight loss has been wildly overstated.

People who exercise tend to eat more to compensate as they're demanding energy from their bodies. It's surprising how rarely we question the fact that slim people start exercising and remain more or less slim, rather than becoming so emaciated that they need to take a break to recover some weight. Yet this is the supposed principle of slimming down someone who's plump, before you even get to fat.

I'm sure this factor doesn't help either;

I will push myself up in various hateful ways for an hour

Some might be nitpick, but we have embedded a culture of physicality that literally trades on something akin to self abuse. This is laziness on the part of the fitness industry and its professionals who, though they are improving are still content to trade on the virulent levels of shame and self disgust easily invoked in matters of weight, to promote disconnection from the bodies distress signals.

A country's level of gym membership doesn't stop weight from rising over that same period any more than the extent of their slimming industry. People used  to be routinely advised to check with their doctors before they went on any diet and/or exercise regime to make sure their body could stand exercising, due to the nature of stress it puts on one. Yes, that does differ from gaining weight.

Equally, the body's defences are amazing in their multifariousness;

.....they compensated in another way, by moving around a lot less than usual after they got home.

Do you know people often don't notice this effect at all? It isn't conscious. It's the body contriving to make good any losses sustained from your endeavours. When you are up against this amount of sneakiness, it's hard not to end up admiring it and realizing our best hope is to work with that process, rather than against it.