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A few months ago, TIME magazine published an article that was surprising to many people who regularly exercise hoping to lose weight and may have sent them right back to bed at 5 in the morning. The title of the article was 'The Myth about Exercise: of course it's good for you, but it won't make you lose weight. Why it's what you eat that really counts.' I'm going to try to summarize it for you and put in my two cents.
It's amazing: although more than 45 million Americans now belong to a gym, up from 23 million in 1993, obesity rates have risen dramatically in the same period. A third of Americans are now obese. Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and exercise researcher says that in general exercise is pretty useless in weight loss. While it is true that exercise can cause a caloric deficit and you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise can also make you hungrier so you eat more. So according to some experts you may even gain weight. A recent study that was published in a peer reviewed journal (PLoS ONE), randomly assigned 464 who didn't regularly exercise into four groups. Women in three of the groups worked out with a personal trainer for 72 min, 136 min, and 194 min. per week respectively for 6 months. Women in the fourth group were the control subjects and were told to maintain their normal routine. All participants were told not to change their dietary habits. The results were rather surprising. The women who exercised did not lose significantly more weight than the control group. Researchers think that this is due to what they call 'compensation'. Basically if you stop at the local donut shop and get a 'reward' because you have just burned 300 or so calories and you think you deserve it, your exercise routine may cause weight gain in the long run. In addition, many people think that exercise turns fat into muscle. The relationship between fat and muscle is not very well understood in the scientific community and definitely misunderstood by others. According to calculations in an article published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, in a resting state a pound of muscle burns approximately 6 calories, while a pound of fat burns two calories. So you see why you can't just eat whatever you want after you exercise and still expect to lose weight. So bottom line: muscle does burn more calories than fat but only a few more; not a whole lot more!
So you may ask why bother with exercise? Because it is good for your body and your mind. Cardiovascular exercise will strengthen your heart muscle (cardiac muscle). The harder you work the stronger your heart will get. So if you continue with your cardio workout, your heart won't have to work as hard to get the same job done (pump blood through your body). Basically the longer you stick with your cardio, the lower your heart rate will be. And as I have written before, other research suggest that new neurons are born after several weeks of exercise, and these neurons are more resistant to stress. Just think what other amazing effects exercise has that we don't know about.
It's amazing: although more than 45 million Americans now belong to a gym, up from 23 million in 1993, obesity rates have risen dramatically in the same period. A third of Americans are now obese. Eric Ravussin, chair in diabetes and metabolism at Louisiana State University and exercise researcher says that in general exercise is pretty useless in weight loss. While it is true that exercise can cause a caloric deficit and you must burn calories to lose weight, exercise can also make you hungrier so you eat more. So according to some experts you may even gain weight. A recent study that was published in a peer reviewed journal (PLoS ONE), randomly assigned 464 who didn't regularly exercise into four groups. Women in three of the groups worked out with a personal trainer for 72 min, 136 min, and 194 min. per week respectively for 6 months. Women in the fourth group were the control subjects and were told to maintain their normal routine. All participants were told not to change their dietary habits. The results were rather surprising. The women who exercised did not lose significantly more weight than the control group. Researchers think that this is due to what they call 'compensation'. Basically if you stop at the local donut shop and get a 'reward' because you have just burned 300 or so calories and you think you deserve it, your exercise routine may cause weight gain in the long run. In addition, many people think that exercise turns fat into muscle. The relationship between fat and muscle is not very well understood in the scientific community and definitely misunderstood by others. According to calculations in an article published in the journal Obesity Research by a Columbia University team in 2001, in a resting state a pound of muscle burns approximately 6 calories, while a pound of fat burns two calories. So you see why you can't just eat whatever you want after you exercise and still expect to lose weight. So bottom line: muscle does burn more calories than fat but only a few more; not a whole lot more!
So you may ask why bother with exercise? Because it is good for your body and your mind. Cardiovascular exercise will strengthen your heart muscle (cardiac muscle). The harder you work the stronger your heart will get. So if you continue with your cardio workout, your heart won't have to work as hard to get the same job done (pump blood through your body). Basically the longer you stick with your cardio, the lower your heart rate will be. And as I have written before, other research suggest that new neurons are born after several weeks of exercise, and these neurons are more resistant to stress. Just think what other amazing effects exercise has that we don't know about.
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