Stop Exercising Just to Lose Weight

Train for this reason instead

Egis R.
4 min readAug 23, 2023
Image by the author

Weight loss is the primary motivation for exercise for most people. This is a big fugging problem because not losing weight is one of the main reasons why many people stop exercising (source):

For the overweight and obese women in this study, weight loss was the primary motivation for physical activity participation. Subsequently, these women perceived a failure to lose weight as strongly affecting their motivation to continue or re-engage in physical activity. <…> Of the 5 participants who dropped out of the exercise program during the 12 weeks, 4 had not lost weight.
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Sure, you might lose some weight at the beginning but at some point, weight loss will stop. It always does (otherwise, you would…die). And what happens when the scale stops moving? Well, you go “godfuckingdammit what’s goin’ on here?” and you stop exercising because it no longer delivers the results for which you started to exercise in the first place.

The reason for this is your attitude toward exercise — you exercise to lose weight. If that’s the only reason you do it, it will always be this chore you have to do to lose weight. You are doomed with a capital You’re Fucked.

This is why many of the subjects in the above study reported discontinuing their exercise programs when weight loss was not forthcoming.

This is also why a European Union-wide survey found that a quarter of respondents thought that “unless physical activity resulted in weight loss, they were not really…

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Egis R.

I’m Egis, an online weight loss coach who has heightened BS sensors for fitness & nutrition. Only evidence-based & sustainable fat loss. www.absscience.com