You can’t really “burn” enough calories to lose weight. You can hit the gym, walk, row, or swim all you want, but exercise alone won’t give you a svelte figure. Given that 1 pound of human fat is worth about 3,500 calories, you would have to add 3,500 calories of extra activity to lose 1 pound. You could walk 35 miles thereby burning 3,500 calories or do one of the following (each of these requires about 500 calories):

• 45-minute jog at a 10-minute mile pace
• 60-minute cycling session
• 90 minutes on the elliptical
• 50 minutes on the Stairmaster
• 70 minutes of resistance training – i.e. lifting weights
• 45-minute breaststroke swim
• 45 minute of treading water
• 2-hour walk at a moderate pace, about 6 miles
• 1-hour Zumba class
• 2-hour Power Yoga class

If you do one of these every single day for a solid week, you might lose a pound, if you eat as you normally would. Whew!
In a large international study conducted by the Loyola University School of Medicine the authors found that while physical activity burns calories, it also increases appetite, and people may compensate by eating more or by being less active the rest of the day. Physical activity has many proven health benefits, allowing people who are physically active to live longer and healthier lives, but it’s not necessarily a good weight-loss method by itself. You cannot outrun a bad diet.
No matter what messages the government or PepsiCo may send out, physical activity and diet should not be given equal, um, weight in any plan to control obesity. The message from food companies has for decades been that it’s our laziness that makes us fat. Nope, it ain’t all about inactivity; it’s much more dependent on what we shove into our pieholes.
A better approach is gradual, small changes to both diet and exercise.

• Eat more fruits and veggies and fewer refined carbs. You might want to lean heavier on the green leafy vegetables, other vegetables, nuts, berries, beans, whole grains, seafood, poultry, olive oil lighten up on the butter, red meats and hard cheeses.
• Increase that once-a-week stroll to a brisk daily walk.
• Step on the scales every week and record the result.
• Make changes that are sustainable over the long haul.

Forcing ourselves to eat kale because it’s supposedly good for us and low in calories is as much an exercise in futility as buying a treadmill that ends up being a clothes rack.
In other words, eat better for good. You’ll lose weight and be in better health in general.
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REFERENCES
Lara R. Dugas​ et al., “Accelerometer-measured Physical Activity Is Not Associated with Two-year Weight Change in African-origin Adults from Five Diverse Populations,” PeerJ, January 19, 2017, accessed February 05, 2017, doi:10.7717/peerj.2902.
Erin Brodwin, “We Should Never Have Told People They Could ‘Burn Off’ Calories,” ScienceAlert, June 16, 2017, accessed June 17, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/SciAlert-ExercisNoBurnCals

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Parts of a scientific paper
Scientific papers usually have 4-5 important parts. It’s important when reading scientific literature to look especially at three parts of the paper:

Discussion/Interpretation/Conclusion:
Go down to the bottom of the article and read this first. It explains how the authors interpret the data resulting from this study/experiment. It’s often the most readable part for the public. Sometimes the Conclusions section can actually show different conclusions or interpretations from the abstract. That’s why you should read this section first.

Abstract:
A kind of mini-version of the paper including the problem scientists were looking into, related work in the field, why this paper is new and novel, the most important findings, the overall conclusion, problems that occurred during the experiments. Abstracts can be long and very informative or short and quickly descriptive.

Results:
All the important resulting data from the experiments. Ask yourself, “Does the data actually support the authors’ conclusions and interpretation?” Occasionally it may not, in which case you can file that one away under “Maybe Not.”

After having read the above parts of the paper, fire up your science dictionary app and proceed to the rest of the article.

Methods and Materials:
Exactly how the research for this paper was done. The authors describe  their processes in precise detail that is clear enough so other scientists can replicate the experiments.

Introduction:
The authors broadly explain their hypothesis and talk about previous research in the field. This section may not be there, because this information may be included in the abstract.

Evaluating Information – what to look for in an article:
​There are questions that ALWAYS have to be answered before you take anything seriously that you find in a magazine, on TV, on Facebook, or anywhere on the web.

Ya gotta ask yourself, “Do I feel lucky? Do I feel secure about this information?” Well do ya, reader?!

Answer me this:

• Who are the authors?
• Are the authors experts in the field? What are their credentials?
• What is the thesis of the article? What are the authors trying to convince you of?
• Do the authors discuss information on other work in the field and how the information was found?
• Does the article suggest new questions to be researched in the field?
• How many test subjects were used in the research?
• Has the author “cherry-picked” the information to support a hypothesis?


• Where do the authors work? Is there a conflict of interest?

Click on an article from your Google Scholar search results to select it to see who the authors work for. Is there a conflict of interest? Is the author being paid by a pharmaceutical manufacturer?