Is Weight Loss without Exercise Possible?
Key Takeaways
The primary driver of weight loss is calorie deficit.
Since you could theoretically create a calorie deficit by simply reducing your food intake, weight loss without exercise is entirely possible.
That said, weight loss without exercise could be a grueling process. Creating the calorie deficit necessary solely from calorie reduction is challenging. Lifestyle factors, genetics, and medical conditions could also add to the difficulty.
Exercise isn’t the only way to increase your daily energy expenditure—there’s also your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) levels.
Ultimately, it appears that improving your diet and exercise habits at the same time tends to result in more favorable weight loss results than either alone.
Let’s get right into it. You can lose weight without exercise. But like all things that sound way too good to be true, there's a catch. To be precise, several catches. Before getting into what those are, though, let's first understand why and how weight loss is possible in the absence of exercise.
What drives weight loss?
Contrary to popular belief, there’s nothing complicated about the mechanism behind weight loss. Your calorie balance (i.e., how many calories you eat versus how many calories your body burns) determines your body weight. After all, according to the law of conservation of energy, energy cannot be created or destroyed—only converted from one form of energy to another. So, if you eat:
More calories than your body needs (i.e., surplus): Your body will store the excess calories as glycogen in your muscles and liver and fat in your adipose tissue. The result is an increase in body weight.
Fewer calories than your body needs (i.e., deficit): Your body is “forced” to draw from its glycogen and fat stores for the energy it needs to function. The result is a decrease in body weight.
Here’s an important disclaimer. Saying that there’s nothing complicated about weight loss isn’t the same as saying it’s easy. The truth is that many people have trouble maintaining a calorie deficit long enough to lose weight successfully and, arguably more importantly, keep it off long-term.
A meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition illustrates this perfectly. The researchers found that individuals tend to regain more than half of the lost weight within two years and close to 80% of lost weight within five years. So, why is long-term weight maintenance so tricky? Well, there are a few reasons, but more on that later.
Exercise increases your calorie burn
First, let's talk about exercise and its role in weight loss. As mentioned earlier, weight loss comes down to a calorie deficit. Since exercise increases your energy expenditure, it could help bring you from a calorie surplus into a deficit (assuming your energy intake remains the same).
That said, strictly speaking, exercise isn't necessary for weight loss. If the ultimate goal is a calorie deficit, you could also achieve it by simply decreasing the number of calories you eat (since calorie balance = "calories in" vs. "calories out").
Weight loss without exercise: doable but difficult
But relying solely on dietary changes for weight loss can be difficult.
The whole process will likely take more time
As a general guideline, you should expect to lose roughly 0.45 kg (1 lb.) of body weight for every 3,500 calories of accumulated dietary calorie deficit. So, to lose 0.45 kg in a week, you’d need a deficit of 500 calories daily.
Think about your current diet. Can you easily shave off 500 calories from it? Compare that to if you were to use exercise to increase your energy expenditure by 300 calories, then make up for the shortfall by cutting 200 calories from your diet. Sounds more manageable, doesn't it?
You’ll have to eat fewer and fewer calories
The more weight you lose, the fewer calories your body burns (because smaller bodies require less energy). Meaning? To continue losing weight, you must reduce your calorie intake even further.
You can try this for yourself by tinkering around with Mayo Clinic’s calorie calculator. For a physically inactive 30-year-old male who’s 1.8 m (5.9 ft) tall and weighs:
90 kg (198.42 lb.): 2,400 calories for weight maintenance
75 kg (165.35 lb.): 2,150 calories for weight maintenance
Your body will fight against weight loss
In a calorie deficit, your body doesn’t only lose body fat; it loses metabolically active muscle mass, too. This can seriously throw a wrench into your weight loss efforts because you’d experience a double whammy effect of reduced resting metabolism (i.e., daily energy expenditure) and increased appetite.
This, in turn, highlights the importance of preserving as much muscle mass as you can in a calorie deficit. And to do that, you’ll need to exercise. Or, more specifically, engage in resistance training.
Stress, genetics, and certain medical conditions could mess things up
Sure, making dietary changes to help you achieve a calorie deficit sounds good … in theory. But in real life? Is it possible when you have to deal with daily stressors and endless adult obligations? Yes, those could culminate in stress eating and poor sleep, standing between you and the much-coveted calorie deficit. To further complicate things, your genetics (research shows that genes are responsible for 80% of body weight) and/or existing medical conditions, from PCOS to diabetes to hypothyroidism, could also make weight loss relatively more difficult for you than the average person.
But thankfully, “more difficult” doesn’t mean “impossible”. By combining medical supervision, health coaching, and weight-loss-promoting medications, NOVI Optimum Plus helps you better deal with life’s stressors and work with your biology for weight loss that lasts.
Don’t underestimate the value of non-exercise activity thermogenesis
A brief recap: weight loss without exercise is possible. But it'll make the process unnecessarily tough. Not to mention unsustainable. Bottom line? If you want to lose weight, ideally, you should still exercise.
Now, at this point, it’s important to note that your “traditional” exercise options (e.g., running, swimming, cycling, and weightlifting) aren’t the only methods you can use to increase your energy expenditure.
You could also boost your daily calorie burn by keeping your non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) levels high. FYI, NEAT refers to the energy you burn from any activity outside of sleeping, eating, or sports-like exercise. Examples include fidgeting more, doing household chores, walking to work, and even typing. And before you dismiss the calories you'd burn from these activities as "meager" or "insignificant", consider the following:
Research suggests that an individual working in an agricultural field could theoretically burn an extra 2,000 (!) calories daily through NEAT-related activities than someone with the same height and body composition who works in a chair-bound job.
Don’t work a physically active job? Don’t worry: this study shows that you could burn up to 40 more calories per hour by simply sitting and “fidgeting” (e.g., toe-tapping, stretching your legs and arms, or flipping through papers) than if you were to sit motionlessly. Spend eight hours working, and that’s an additional 320 calories.
A combination of diet and exercise works best for weight loss
While increasing your NEAT levels can do a lot for you, it cannot replace exercise’s role in promoting healthy, sustainable weight loss. In truth, a large body of evidence—including this 2015 systematic review and meta-analysis published in the Journal of Diabetes & Metabolic Disorders—has found that the combination of diet and exercise interventions is more effective at inducing favorable body composition changes than either exercise or diet alone interventions.
Oh, and remember the meta-analysis of 29 long-term weight loss studies mentioned earlier? The researchers actually noted that the individuals who reported higher amounts of exercise were significantly more successful in maintaining their weight loss than those with lower amounts of physical activity.
But what if starting both at the same time just sounds way too overwhelming? In that case, you could start by making small, healthy changes to your diet first, such as:
Make sure to stay physically active throughout your days (via NEAT), too. Then, once you’ve seen some results and gotten into the groove, you could ease into an exercise routine. Keep sustainability in mind as you make the necessary lifestyle changes. This means you shouldn't fall for fad diets' "quick fix" promises.
But what if you simply don't know where or how to start changing your lifestyle for weight loss? Or do you suspect that your genetics and/or existing medical conditions are compromising your weight loss efforts? Then check out NOVI's Optimum Plus program.
You don’t have to figure out weight loss by yourself. And, more importantly, you don’t have to be at the mercy of your biology when it comes to the amount of weight you can lose. The NOVI Optimum Plus program pairs personalized modern medication with medically backed health coaching and nutrition counseling —providing you with the guidance and biological support needed to lose weight and keep it off. For good.
