What if you quit going to the gym as a New Year’s resolution and exercise hard, but you can’t seem to lose weight? It’s not because your will is weak. Research results have shown that this is because our bodies ‘save’ energy.
A research team led by Professor Herman Ponzer of Duke University analyzed 14 large-scale studies including data from 450 adults and found that our bodies save a significant portion of the calories burned through exercise from other activities. This is the so-called ‘Energy Compensation’ effect. The research results were published in the latest issue of the international academic journal Current Biology.
Until now, we have believed in the simple addition formula of ‘basal metabolic rate + exercise consumption = total daily energy consumption’. The calculation is that if a person who consumes 2,000 kcal a day burns 400 kcal more through exercise, a total of 2,400 kcal will be consumed and the person will lose weight.
However, according to the ‘constrained model’ presented by the research team, there is a certain limit to the total amount of energy that the human body can use per day. When the amount of exercise increases rapidly, our body recognizes this as a ‘crisis situation’ and begins managing energy efficiency to survive.
According to the research team, in order to maintain overall energy consumption within a certain range, our body forcibly reduces the energy used for other internal activities such as immune activity, cell repair, and digestion. This ‘energy compensation’ rate reached an average of 28%. Even if you burn 100 kcal through exercise, your body saves 28 kcal and uses it elsewhere, so you actually only consume an additional 72 kcal.
In particular, this compensatory action is further maximized when limiting calories eaten and exercising. This is because our body recognizes the double whammy of reduced intake and increased consumption as a survival crisis and strongly activates ‘energy saving mode’.
In actual animal experiments, it was confirmed that the compensatory action reached up to 100%. This means that even if 100 kcal is consumed through exercise, the body saves equivalent energy in other areas such as basic metabolism, resulting in zero additional caloric consumption. This explains why a ‘plateau’ occurs in which weight loss is slow even if an intense diet is continued.
However, not all exercises produced the same compensatory effect. Aerobic exercise such as running showed a strong energy compensation effect, while resistance exercise (strength exercise) showed less effect. This means that if your goal is to lose weight, strength training is more effective.
However, this study does not mean that exercise is unnecessary. Even if exercise is less effective for weight loss, exercise itself offers numerous health benefits, including improved cardiovascular health, improved insulin sensitivity, reduced visceral fat, and improved mental health. This is an effect that occurs regardless of weight change.
However, this study shows why it is so difficult to lose weight through exercise alone and why diet control is crucial to dieting.
The research team explained, “Animals, including humans, respond to increased physical activity by reducing energy consumption required for other activities, which supports the theory that energy consumption is limited.”
date: 2026-02-10 22:57:00