And therein lies another key difference between walking today and in ancient times. If I walk ten thousand extra steps to place my body in negative energy balance, it is literally a piece of cake for me to wipe out the extra cost of such a walk. The ease of refueling with a donut or a Gatorade or just by sitting at my desk for the rest of the day helps explain the counterintuitive result we just saw from the DREW study in which the women who exercised the most lost less weight than predicted: they ate more.36
