Burn more, weigh less. Sounds simple, right? Not exactly.

A new study is challenging conventional wisdom about exercise and weight loss, suggesting your workout may not burn as many calories as you think.

The findings could help explain why so many people don’t see the scale budge, even when they’re regularly hitting the gym and watching what they eat.

It all comes down to math.

Over the course of a day, your body’s natural calorie burn without any formal exercise can range from about 1,300 to more than 2,000, depending on age, sex and other factors, according to the Cleveland Clinic.

For years, scientists assumed any extra calories you burned — like from running a mile or swimming laps — would simply add to that total and lead to weight loss.

But recently, some researchers have been questioning that “additive model,” suggesting the body may follow a “constrained” approach instead.

That theory says your body has a built-in energy cap. So when you burn more calories during exercise, your body makes up for it by saving calories elsewhere — like cutting back on cellular repairs and other internal tasks.

Intrigued, two Duke University researchers decided to put the models head-to-head.

They reviewed 14 exercise studies involving 450 people, along with several animal trials, and compared the calories subjects were expected to burn with the calories they actually burned.

On average, the researchers found that only 72% of the calories burned during exercise actually showed up in total daily burn — the other 28% was quietly offset elsewhere in the body.

From an evolutionary standpoint, it makes sense. Our ancestors had to trek for miles without exhausting their energy reserves, according to Herman Pontzer, lead author of the study and an evolutionary anthropologist.

He witnessed this firsthand in Tanzania, where he lived among the Hadza, one of the last hunter-gatherer communities on Earth. Every day they trek miles across the dry savannah, hunting game and foraging for food.

Pontzer expected them to burn far more calories than notoriously sedentary Americans, but he found they actually burned about the same amount.

Our flexible metabolism — which lets us adapt to different diets and store fat for hard times — helped humans survive and thrive, and even shaped the way we age, Pontzer explained in an interview with Duke’s Magnify Magazine.

Notably, however, this compensation effect wasn’t universal across all workouts.

The researchers found the body only seemed to compensate during aerobic exercise like running. When it came to lifting weights or resistance training, the three strength studies they reviewed showed people burned more calories than expected based on how much they exercised.

The team isn’t exactly sure why — but they have a few theories.

For one, it’s tough to measure calories burned while lifting. The methods used in the studies are likely better suited for steady cardio, so the numbers might be off.

It’s also possible that heavy lifting doesn’t trigger the same compensation response as long, sweaty aerobic sessions. And the act of repairing muscle damage after strength training may require extra energy as well.

Diet also seemed to play a key role in how the body compensates.

The researchers found that if people cut calories while ramping up their workouts, their total burn often didn’t budge at all.

“The real killer here is that if you pair exercise with diet, your body goes, ‘Fine, well, then I’m going to compensate more,’” Pontzer told the New Scientist. “It’s still good for you, just not for weight loss.”

But that doesn’t mean you should cancel your gym membership.

Regular movement is still essential for our health — lowering chronic inflammation, stabilizing hormones and reducing the risk of chronic illnesses.

“You have to think about diet and exercise as two different tools for two different jobs,” Pontzer said.

“Diet is the tool for managing your weight. Exercise is the tool for everything else related to health — from mental health to cardiometabolic disease.”

A new collaboration between Hong Kong Ballet (HKB) and Pure Fitness promises to combine “grace and strength” in a series of community workshops to demystify the classical dance form while promoting wellness culture and the science of modern fitness in Hong Kong.

“Most people might only think about the performance or artistic elements of ballet, so they might not realise that underneath all of it is about getting our bodies ready,” says Irene Lo, an associate director of training with the ballet company.

“We do a lot of work on alignments and posture and muscle training, and those are things that could help anyone, even as an office worker.

“[It is about] bringing a little bit more ballet from that very faraway stage into daily life.”

The partnership signifies a growing trend of interdisciplinary wellness that positions Hong Kong at the forefront of a global movement where artistic and athletic disciplines converge.

It’s become a viral fitness trend, and the Japanese interval walking technique is a relatively easy way to boost your fitness. And the great thing is it’s totally free

For those looking to improve their health and fitness in the year ahead, it can often feel like an uphill struggle just trying to start a new regime. But as most medical experts will tell you, making even small steps to being more active can have a big impact on your overall health and well-being.

As the MEN reported at the weekend, one free and easy way to boost your fitness is by using the Japanese walking technique, which involves walking fast and then slow at set intervals. We tried the technique with impressive results, as you can read about here.

Much has been written in recent years about trying to hit a steps goal as a way of using walking for fitness, with many striving to hit a 10,000 daily steps target to stay healthy and in shape.

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But with Japanese walking, there’s no steps goal – instead you are encouraged to walk for 30 minutes, at least four times a week, alternating between three minutes “fast” walking and three minutes “slow”.

You set your own pace while doing the technique, so it’s whatever you consider to be “fast” – described by experts as enough to make you feel “out of breath” by the end of each set.

The technique has become known as Japanese walking as it was first developed and studied for its health benefits by experts at Shinshu University in Japan. Its medical research team there found that participants completing interval training over a five month period improved their fitness by up to 20 per cent.

Professor Masuki Shizue of the Shinshu University Graduate School of Medicine was one of the co-researchers on the project. She noted that the interval walking technique was particularly helpful for older people as it’s a low impact form of exercise, and may help ease existing health problems too.

The most recent study on the official website states: “Walking is one of the easiest form of exercise for older adults. Professor Masuki and her team demonstrated that “interval walking,” which involves alternating between brisk and slow walking, can help mitigate the risk of lifestyle-related diseases.

“A large-scale survey of 234 participants who engaged in interval walking was conducted to determine whether interval walking improves bone mineral density and whether this improvement is greater among individuals with low bone mineral density. The findings of the present study revealed that interval walking is an excellent form of exercise, especially for individuals with low bone mineral density.”

It continued that given that it does not require any special equipment and can be performed at a pace that suits the physical fitness of the individual, interval walking is also a sustainable form of exercise for most able-bodied individuals.

Indeed the only “equipment” you need to get started on the interval walking is comfortable walking shoes and either a watch or phone to time each three minute interval. As each workout is just 30 minutes, it’s also a great form of exercise to fit into busy schedules, or for those simply not that keen on exercising, as you’re not striving to reach a set steps limit each day.

Studies are now ongoing at the university to verify the effects of interval walking on specific diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. But it added that it “could help prevent the incidence of lifestyle-related diseases and exert therapeutic effects if it can reduce the dosage of prescription medications or eliminate their requirement”.

How do you do interval walking?

As described by Shinshu University, interval walking involves walking briskly for three minutes until “one is out of breath (approximately 70% of the peak aerobic capacity), followed by three minutes of slow walking and this process is repeated thereafter”.

To improve physical fitness, they recommend adopting the technique for five sets of intervals (so 30 minutes) of this style of walking per day, on 4 or more days a week.

They say that after five months, doing the interval walking 4 times a week “can improve physical fitness by up to 20%.” They say it may also help to prevent “lifestyle-related illnesses.”

Who can benefit from interval walking?

As well as being good for people aiming to improve their overall fitness levels, the study by Shinshu University found that this style of interval walking could be particularly beneficial to those with “low bone mineral density”. As bone density declines with age, that includes some older people, and women going through the menopause.

The research said: “Osteoporosis [weakening bones] is particularly prevalent among postmenopausal women owing to the rapid decline in the secretion of female hormones resulting in a reduction in bone mineral density.

“A total of 234 postmenopausal women completed five sets of interval walking per day on at least 4 days per week for 5 months in this study.

“Measurement of the bone mineral density of the participants revealed an increase in the bone mineral density of individuals with low bone mineral density at baseline. No changes were observed in the bone density of individuals with high bone mineral density at baseline.”