Is Western exercise really that effective for weight loss ? …
Something strange has happened in the West over the last few decades. Since gyms became popular, obesity levels have sky rocketed. It is claimed that exercise is great for weight loss, yet the results produced in our society seem to say the opposite.
A study by a team at the Louisiana University of 464 overweight women, who were assigned different levels of exercise for six months, found that the group who exercised the most did not lose significantly more weight than the other groups who did less.
Another study by researchers at the University Of Leeds published in the Journal Of Public Health Nutrition came to similar conclusions.
So what’s going on? ...
Something strange has happened in the West over the last few decades. Since gyms became popular, obesity levels have sky rocketed. It is claimed that exercise is great for weight loss, yet the results produced in our society seem to say the opposite.
A study by a team at the Louisiana University of 464 overweight women, who were assigned different levels of exercise for six months, found that the group who exercised the most did not lose significantly more weight than the other groups who did less.
Another study by researchers at the University Of Leeds published in the Journal Of Public Health Nutrition came to similar conclusions.
So what’s going on? ...
Well exercise certainly does burn up calories, but surprisingly not always that many. The average Westerner consumes about 2,500 calories a day. If you run for an entire hour you will only burn up about three hundred and fifty of them. This is not a huge amount in comparison to your overall daily intake.
However with all this activity, you will also use up your energy and weaken your body. And this will inevitably cause you to become more hungry and eat more, putting the calories you lost through the exercise back into your system.
The other side of this - is that with lower energy levels in your body, the rate at which everything else is running at inside of you starts to slow down.
With less power your brain, kidneys, liver, heart, lungs and other organs, including the digestive ones will weaken and run less effectively. This will reduce the speed at which your body consumes and burns up your food, which in turn slows and limits your weight loss.
In 2007, after researching the subject, the American Heart Association and the American College Of Sports Medicine issued guidelines suggesting that in order to lose weight, they recommended people to exercise intensely for sixty to ninety minutes on most days of the week.
Apart from what many would see as the torture of having to workout for ninety minutes nearly every day and the impractical side of finding time to do that amount of exercise when you have a job, commitments and a life to lead, it also highlights how ineffective exercise is as a weight loss tool.
Finally if you do manage to reduce weight through strenuous exercise alone, you will also become tied and dependent on that method. If you stop exercising, the weight usually just piles back on.
Whereas if you make and keep the right changes in your diet and combine that with a smaller amount of easy to do less intensive exercise, then the weight will usually stay off permanently.
However with all this activity, you will also use up your energy and weaken your body. And this will inevitably cause you to become more hungry and eat more, putting the calories you lost through the exercise back into your system.
The other side of this - is that with lower energy levels in your body, the rate at which everything else is running at inside of you starts to slow down.
With less power your brain, kidneys, liver, heart, lungs and other organs, including the digestive ones will weaken and run less effectively. This will reduce the speed at which your body consumes and burns up your food, which in turn slows and limits your weight loss.
In 2007, after researching the subject, the American Heart Association and the American College Of Sports Medicine issued guidelines suggesting that in order to lose weight, they recommended people to exercise intensely for sixty to ninety minutes on most days of the week.
Apart from what many would see as the torture of having to workout for ninety minutes nearly every day and the impractical side of finding time to do that amount of exercise when you have a job, commitments and a life to lead, it also highlights how ineffective exercise is as a weight loss tool.
Finally if you do manage to reduce weight through strenuous exercise alone, you will also become tied and dependent on that method. If you stop exercising, the weight usually just piles back on.
Whereas if you make and keep the right changes in your diet and combine that with a smaller amount of easy to do less intensive exercise, then the weight will usually stay off permanently.
For long term and permanent weight loss and also whole body health gains, a combination of good dietary practice and frequent gentle to moderate exercise seems to work the best and gives the most benefit.
References …
- Why exercise may not make you thin, Gray R., Telegraph, 24-08-09.
www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6083234/Health-warning-exercise-makes-you-fat.html
References …
- Why exercise may not make you thin, Gray R., Telegraph, 24-08-09.
www.telegraph.co.uk/science/6083234/Health-warning-exercise-makes-you-fat.html
