⚖️ Why We Should Stop Just Telling People to Exercise More and Eat Less

I sigh a big sigh as I type this one, because pushing against the age-old calories in, calories out, just exercise more and eat less weight loss mantra is akin to trying to swim up a waterfall. You just get crushed.

But here’s the thing. Yes. What you eat is important. Yes. Exercise is important. But to say that the golden ticket to lasting weight loss for every human on the planet is just to move more and eat less simply isn’t true. We’ve seen it in real life. We’ve seen it in research. You’ve very likely seen it in yourself. Your body is a living, breathing, adapting, shifting, compensating organism that doesn’t follow the rudimentary math we use on paper—even if you assume that we actually know precisely how many calories we eat and expend on any given day.

Some people never count a macro or calorie and stay pretty weight stable. Others track every movement and morsel and lose/plateau/regain over and over. You can hear a whole conversation about all the science behind this with weight loss specialist Dr. Jody Dushay (episode 237 Hit Play Not Pause) if you’d like to get fully in the forest.

So, I was happy to see a recent paper in Current Biology, aptly titled: The evidence for constrained total energy expenditure in humans and other animals. The paper adds to a body of evidence that supports the idea that total energy expenditure (TEE)—how many calories you burn a day—often isn’t additive with physical activity in the way simple calculators assume. Instead, our bodies trade off energy usage across different physiological processes. So if we’re burning a ton on exercise, we might need to conserve elsewhere—especially if we’re also eating less (more on that in a second). Which just makes sense from a survival/evolutionary perspective.

Eating Less Sometimes Equals Less Weight Lost

The study, which analyzed data from more than a dozen exercise and diet trials, found that when people start exercising, they burn more calories, as you’d expect. But they don’t lose as much weight as you’d expect, based on the calories burned. That’s because our bodies compensate by dialing down how many calories we burn elsewhere.

There’s emerging evidence of a kind of threshold effect where at lower activity levels, TEE increases with activity, but at higher levels, it plateaus or is constrained, as the body may reduce energy expenditure in other areas, including spontaneous activity, thermogenesis, and in some cases resting or sleeping metabolism—particularly when exercise is paired with caloric restriction.

According to the study, in human aerobic exercise interventions, total daily energy expenditure increased by only ∼30% of the change expected from additive models, on average. And when folks ate less through restrictive diets, their bodies compensated even more. So spontaneous activity, non-exercise thermogenesis (NEAT), immune function, or reproductive energy allocation might decrease. Any woman who has lost her menstrual cycle from low energy availability has seen this in action.

It’s worth noting that this study also found that compensation appeared to be reduced with resistance training and was amplified when aerobic exercise is paired with diet restriction.

This doesn’t mean exercise can’t support weight loss for anyone. It clearly can–and seems most useful in avoiding gain/regain. But it means that across populations, the body may often adapt in ways that blunt the expected results–something we see all the time.

I think this also helps explain why many women in our community who want to lose fat see their body composition shift when they start lifting weights and eating a bit more to support their activity levels. You’re working with your physiology not against it, which is always the path towards greater success.

Recover Your Gut Health

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👀 What Caught My Eye

Emerging evidence suggests that women’s metabolic health in their late 40s—particularly insulin regulation—may help shape how their menopausal transition unfolds.

In an analysis drawing on data from the long-running SWAN study, researchers found that women with higher insulin levels around age 47 tended to experience hot flashes and night sweats earlier, and to have those symptoms persist for longer once they began. These metabolic changes were also associated with a rise in testosterone across the menopausal transition. The findings point to insulin as a potential upstream factor influencing not just cardiometabolic risk, but also the timing and trajectory of vasomotor symptoms.

Practically speaking, this reframes menopause as more than a purely hormonal event. While the data is observational and we can’t yet say whether improving insulin sensitivity will prevent hot flashes, it does raise the possibility that if we pay earlier attention to metabolic markers like fasting insulin and glucose, we might improve future symptom burden.

The good news here is that the same lifestyle behaviors that support insulin sensitivity, like regular physical activity (especially resistance training), higher-quality carbohydrate intake, adequate sleep, and stress management are just plain good for us, so we might as well do them anyway. They might also contribute to fewer symptoms in the menopausal transition.

🔥Badass Athlete of the Week Goes To…

Let’s have a resounding round of applause for Lynne Wawryk-Epp, who at the age of 70, not only finished 8th in the mixed masters mile event at the Sanderson Classic at the University of Saskatchewan in January, but also was the first woman across the line, clocking an incredible 7:12:28, crushing the women’s age-group record for the indoor mile by more than 8 seconds, according to Canadian Running. The former record was set by Ontario’s Jean Horne and stood for nearly 20 years.

Love to see it! Way to smash it, Lynne!

👉Want a chance to be featured? Click here to share your badass story

👩🏻‍💻 Hit Play Research Round Up

We spend a lot of time scouring the latest research for news you can use to stay strong and feisty forever. Here’s what’s making waves this week:

🍳 Skipping breakfast was linked to a higher risk of metabolic syndrome, according to a large review of observational studies (9 studies, 118,000+ people). People who regularly skipped breakfast had about a 10% higher risk overall, along with higher odds of abdominal obesity, high blood pressure, unhealthy blood lipids, and elevated blood sugar. These studies can’t prove cause and effect. But it’s another reason—along with supporting circadian rhythms and fueling for the day’s activity—to make your morning meal a daily habit—especially in midlife, when insulin regulation and cardiometabolic risk start to matter more.

🍏 Diet quality may influence when menopause begins. Using U.S. data, researchers found that women with higher antioxidant intake (from foods rich in vitamins C, A, E, carotenoids, zinc, and selenium) tended to reach menopause slightly later, had a longer reproductive lifespan, and were less likely to experience early menopause. The effects were modest, leveled off at higher intakes, and this was observational—so we can’t make cause-and-effect claims. But it adds to growing evidence that eating a diet rich in nutrient-dense whole foods supports overall health and reproductive aging.

🗣️ Menopause-related hormone shifts—especially drops in estrogen and progesterone—can change the voice, according to a research review. Many women experience lower pitch, reduced vocal stability, vocal fatigue, and changes in voice quality, with up to ~46% reporting noticeable differences. Treatments like voice therapy, hydration and vocal hygiene, and in some cases hormone therapy, may help, but this is an area where more research is needed.

What's On My Mind...

Gray. Coloring my hair is a PIA. Life would be a billion times easier if I let it all go gray. But I also can’t wrap my brain around growing it out without chopping it off and really feel like doing neither. Then there’s the skin tone issue. Whenever I entertain it and let it grow out a bit, I feel like the gray hair blends with my skin and washes me out instead of giving me the contrast I’ve always had…and I don’t love it. So, I guess I’ll keep my stylist in heavy rotation (hair grows fast) until I figure out another way.

Listen to this week's episode of Hit Play Not Pause - Understanding Midlife Weight Gain, Menopause, and GLP-1s

Feisty 40+ is written by Selene Yeager. Edited by Maya Smith. Ads by Ella Hnatyshyn

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