| Today’s letter |
| The daily exercise that may help you keep more of the weight off |
| Jessica Simpson has lost 100 pounds three times. She wrote the number herself in April 2022, in a caption under a bikini photo, saying she had gained and lost 100 pounds three times over and had enjoyed a good proud cry about it. Six months after her third child she had posted a different number, 240 on the scale and 100 pounds down from it. Three rounds, and three times starting over. |
| A study made headlines this past week. In mice, fat cells appear to keep a hunger hormone elevated long after the weight is gone, as though the body remembers being heavier. The scientists at Case Western Reserve say the cells hold something like a memory of obesity. You have probably seen the coverage, and if you have ever lost weight and watched it come back, you already knew they were right… |
| “Why can’t I just keep it off?” |
| This was not a woman who gave up. She walked her way there the third time, six thousand steps a day building to fourteen thousand, with a trainer checking in by email every night. When the weight came off, the magazines ran the photos and the tabloids counted every pound afterward. The one thing nobody could tell her was how to make the number stay.
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| Every magazine ran the same instruction: move more, burn the calories. Exercise was sold as the tool for taking the weight off, so once it was off, the reason to keep going went with it. That is where almost everyone stops, and almost nobody is told otherwise. Nowhere in that advice is the part about when exercise matters most. |
| Here’s what gets me. |
| She wasn’t the one who failed. The advice was. |
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| Let me show you how I know. Not with my opinion, but with a study. |
| Researchers gathered the results of 11 randomized controlled trials covering 568 people. Every participant had recently lost weight through a diet or a structured program. |
| Some were assigned exercise during the months after the weight came off, and the rest were not. Researchers then compared how much each group regained. |
| What they found |
| Meta-analysis of 11 randomized controlled trials, 568 participants, 2026. Wang et al., Scientific Reports. |
| No exercise after the diet (they regained) |
| Without exercise in the maintenance phase, the control groups regained more in every comparison. Nothing in the diet itself protected the loss. |
| Exercise after the diet (6 fewer pounds back) |
| The group that kept exercising regained about 6 fewer pounds, and across the trials that measured body weight the results pointed the same way with no disagreement between them. |
| Different weight-loss methods, different amounts lost. The only difference within each trial was whether they exercised after. |
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| In other words, exercise may not be the best tool for losing the weight. It is a tool for holding on to more of the weight you lost. |
| The weight coming back had nothing to do with willpower. Not hers, and not yours. |
| If exercise barely budges the scale on its own, why would it matter so much after the diet ends? |
| When you diet, you lose muscle along with fat, and less muscle means fewer calories burned at rest. Exercise fights on the other side: it preserves that muscle, keeps your resting metabolism from dropping as far, and improves insulin sensitivity. Meanwhile, a 2026 study in mice found that fat cells may keep a hunger hormone called asprosin elevated long after the weight is gone. It is as if the body has not accepted the new number. So the hunger stays high and the calorie burn drops low. The woman who quit her gym routine after the diet gave up the one thing standing between her and the rebound. |
| Jessica never stood a chance. Neither did you, I’d bet. |
| That’s the part no one says out loud… |
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| Try this today |
| After any weight loss, from a diet, a medication, anything at all, keep an exercise routine going. Walking counts, and so does biking, swimming, or dancing in your kitchen. Start after the diet ends and keep it up. Across the 11 trials the methods ranged from walking programs to resistance training, and the benefit held either way. |
| The exercise is not for losing. It is for holding on to what you lost. |
| Promise me you’ll try it today? Saying it out loud is half of what makes it stick. |
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| The exercise does not erase the biology. Your fat cells may still send the signal. But exercise preserves the muscle that dieting strips, keeps your resting burn from dropping as far, and gives your body a way to push back against the rebound. It is not magic, just the part of the plan nobody handed her. |
| Jessica Simpson got there in the end, on her own, by walking every day and not stopping once the weight was off. Most women are never handed that part at all. They get the diet, and then they get the silence after it. |
| There is still time for you. |
| All those years of blaming yourself for the rebound… |
| It was never your fault. |
| — Cole |
| P.S. How many times have you started exercising for a diet and then stopped when the diet ended? Just the number, hit reply. I’ll tell you tomorrow how you compare. |
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