For mortality, people with a high BMI and good aerobic fitness fared better than normal-weight people with poor fitness. For diabetes and its risk factors, fitness did not cancel out excess weight.

The standard MET assumes a resting oxygen use of 3.5 ml per kg per minute; measured in 642 women and 127 men it averaged 2.6. Correcting for your own resting rate removed the error, and for body weight exercises the energy cost scales with repetitions.

In older women measured with doubly labelled water, four months of supervised aerobic training left resting metabolic rate unchanged, and over 10 months of exercise resting metabolic rate did not change in young adults either.

Natural bodybuilders spent 22 ± 9 weeks preparing for a contest. In elite athletes, losing 0.7 percent of body weight a week kept and even added lean mass, while 1.4 percent a week did not.

Every weight-loss method ends in a plateau. A modelling study suggests GLP-1 drugs and gastric bypass push it later by weakening the appetite feedback that diets leave intact, and appetite pushes back harder than metabolism does.

Female physique athletes who dieted to contest leanness showed changes across every immune measure tested, most of which returned during weight regain. No study here identifies a body fat threshold.

A label calorie is a prediction. In a controlled feeding study pistachios delivered less energy than the label factors predicted, and digesting a mixed diet takes 5 to 15 percent of daily energy expenditure.

Men with years of training were far stronger and more muscular than untrained men, but their muscle activation matched men with 12 weeks of training. The extra strength from years of lifting tracked muscle size.

Hunter-gatherer data show no single ancestral diet. The plant-to-animal balance shifts with climate and economy, the Hadza diet is high in fibre and changes month to month, and modelled Paleolithic diets come out moderate in carbohydrate rather than low.

Tribulus and fenugreek are both promoted for raising testosterone. A 2025 review found no robust evidence for tribulus; in a 12-week trial of 95 men, fenugreek raised saliva testosterone versus placebo but plasma testosterone only versus baseline.

Pooling four cohorts of 199,634 adults, regular breakfast skippers were more likely to develop or die from cardiovascular disease (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.08 to 1.35). In 26,902 US men, the link with heart disease ran through body weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes.

In a randomised trial of 100 inactive adults with overweight or obesity, morning and evening exercise both produced modest weight loss, with no difference between timings in resting metabolic rate or physical activity. The authors found no optimal time to exercise.

Hadza hunter-gatherers were more active than Westerners yet spent no more energy once body size was accounted for. In 584 older adults, energy expenditure rose with activity overall but stayed flat in those in negative energy balance.

In 82 elite male athletes measured by DXA, more self-reported sedentary time predicted higher total and trunk fat mass regardless of training time, but not lower lean mass. A study of 82 university student-athletes using bioimpedance found no significant relationship.

Worried your coffee habit is affecting your thyroid? In US NHANES data, 2–4 cups of coffee a day were associated with lower TSH and no significant change in thyroid hormones, with no link to hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism; in a metabolically unhealthy subgroup, caffeine's association with TSH varied by dose.

After chewing, most of the fat in almonds stayed sealed inside intact cell walls. In a metabolic-ward trial, a diet designed to deliver more substrate to the colon lowered the share of energy the body kept, without changing hunger or energy expenditure.

A 2026 scoping review found nine human studies and judged the evidence very limited. Reported benefits sit alongside potential nutrient shortfalls and rises in LDL and total cholesterol.

A systematic review of 49 trials found that carbohydrate intake rarely changed strength performance in fed lifters doing up to 10 sets per muscle group. Benefits appeared mainly against fasted controls, at higher volumes, or with two sessions a day.

In a randomised crossover trial in healthy normal-weight women, eating the same food on a regular six-meal pattern was associated with a greater thermic effect of food, lower glucose responses and lower hunger than an irregular pattern of three to nine meals a day.

Protein synthesis after a first workout did not correlate with 16 weeks of growth in untrained men, and in another cohort acute rises in growth hormone, free testosterone and IGF-1 did not predict lean mass or strength gains. Short-term markers can mislead.