We're not rats, but...
 

This article re-inforces what many of us are experiencing.

http://calorielab.com/news/2009/09/0...ntenance-rats/

Interesting.

Aww, apparently I'm '403 Forbidden'. What's the article about?

Why exercise works for avoiding weight regain

When people lose a lot of weight, those who are successful at keeping it off for the long term usually say that they still exercise a lot, as well as maintaining a healthy — if not as strict as it once was — diet. It turns out those people are onto something, if research in rats holds in people.
Exercise cuts appetite, burns fat first

Researchers at the University of Colorado, Denver, used obesity-prone rats in their study, first having them gain weight and then lose weight. Some rats were exercised during a maintenance phase of the diet, while others remained sedentary. The rats were then given free rein to eat as much low-fat food as they wanted for eight weeks, with the same exercise or sedentary pattern that had already been established.
The mice who exercised gained back less weight than their sedentary counterparts, burned more fat earlier in the day and more carbohydrates later in the day, gained fewer fat cells and less abdominal fat during the relapse portion of the study, showed less desire to overeat and were better able to match energy intake with energy consumption.

The sedentary animals, on the other hand, burned carbs first and produced more fat tissue. Burning up carbohydrates first may have been the reason the sedentary rats ate more than those that exercised.
More fat cells appear in sedentary rats

When rats that didn’t exercise started to eat without restriction, their bodies seemed to produce new fat cells, which could help explain why they gained weight back quickly, particularly in the abdomen.
Researchers didn’t expect to find production of new fat cells, since it’s generally been thought that the number of fat cells a person (or a rat) has is genetically predetermined. They say more research will have to be done to determine if exercise really is preventing the formation of new fat cells or simply altering the size of the cells that were already there.
(By Sarah E. White for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News)

Thanks CJZee, that's the way I should have put this article here in the first place!

Thank you for the article, very interesting!