Exercise is probably bad for you. Did you read that right? Let it sink in.

For one, exercise causes many people to overeat by giving them permission to indulge. The phenomenon is called moral licensing -- the psychological tendency to splurge in one area of our life when we're being good in another.

Moral licensing is why a study found people “are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing [environmentally] green products as opposed to conventional products.” It’s why other studies found participants who believed multivitamin pills provided significant health benefits also exercised less, were less likely to choose healthy food, and smoked more cigarettes.

The phenomenon accounts for why many runners gain weight while training for a race. They expend more calories during their runs, but by rewarding themselves with indulgences throughout their day like an insulin-spiking post-workout “sports drink,” they ultimately negate many of the health benefits of exercise.

There's another reason people rarely exercise themselves thin. According to science writer Gary Taubes, “The one thing that might be said about exercise with certainty is that it tends to makes us hungry. Maybe not immediately, but eventually.” Though Taubes cites extensive evidence backing his claim in his multiple books on the topic, the idea also makes intuitive sense. However, most fitness apps ignore the fact we work up an appetite.

When we exercise, the blood stream is drained of glucose so the body activates an uncomfortable sensation to get us to refuel. Hunger pangs, or the fear thereof, drive our search for sustenance.

For roughly 95% of the 200,000 years our species has existed, food was relatively hard to come by. Today however, sugar-laden calorie bombs are cheap, delicious, and readily accessible. Whereas our ancestors laboriously cracked nuts with their hands and primitive tools or gnashed animal caracas with their powerful jaws, we sip pre-masticated Mega Mango Smoothies at Jamba Juice (with 52 grams of sugar in the smallest 16 ounce size).

Exercise does us in by making us hungrier throughout the day and since our food is so full of stuff that makes us fat, we become more likely to over-consume without noticing. A few extra bites at lunch and an extra piece of fruit after dinner and we’ve negated the 300 calories we burned running for 30 minutes on the treadmill.

I'm not saying all exercise is bad for all people. I enjoy running three days per week and we've all heard the countless studies supporting the benefits of exercise. However, people don't live in a behavioral vacuum and there are deeper physiological and psychological influences we must be aware of. Not only are we hungrier but we are more likely to yield to temptation thinking we’ve already paid for our sins in the gym.

Too many fitness products emphasis sweating the pounds away without establishing a base of proper nutrition. People look to their fitness products as authorities for what's good for them but unfortunately most fitness trackers perpetuate behaviors that backfire in ways we don't even notice and certainly don't intend.