Apparently this week on ABC News there was a story on a new study that came out in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This study was titled Physical Activity and Weight Gain Prevention. I received so many questions about the report that I had to read the article for myself. These researchers followed over 34,000 women from 1992-2007. They looked at how many hours per week they were exercising. They did not alter their diets at all for this study. Here is what they found. The participants gained on average 2.6kgs (5.72lbs). They found that lose the exercised for about an hour everyday did the best job maintaining their weight. They also observed that those individuals who had a Body Mass Index (BMI) of under 25 (healthy category) did the best job at maintaining their current weight over the study. Here is the actual conclusion from the study:
Among women consuming a usual diet, physical activity was associated with less weight gain only among women whose BMI was lower than 25. Women successful in maintaining normal weight and gaining fewer than 2.3 kg over 13 years averaged approximately 60 minutes a day of moderate intensity activity throughout the study.
Someone just looking at the study would assume that even if you workout everyday for an hour you won't lose weight. There was an article in Time Magazine last year that had a similar subject and if I remember correctly the author got ripped pretty bad for his article. Another study from the North American Association on the Study of Obesity perform a similar test and found that individuals exercising 6 hours per week on average only lost 4lbs for the entire year. You can see my comments on this study here. So does this mean you should just give up on your exercise program? I mean why workout everyday if you will only maintain your current weight?
Obviously this is not the case. You NEED an exercise program for long term successful weight loss. So here is my take on the study:
1. This study really is showing us common sense. What it says to me is that those who are at a healthy weight (BMI under 25) had more success maintaining weight. This means in you are in better shape you are more likely to stay in better shape. If you are overweight then you have been doing something wrong in the past and will most likely continue to do so. It also tells us that just adding an exercise program does not guarantee weight loss.
2. This study did not alter the participants diet plan or educate them on proper nutritional habits. These were American subjects and they stuck with a usual American diet. I think by now most people realize the American diet is probably the worse diet program in the world. The fact that these women only gained on average 5lbs over 13 years is pretty amazing. I think the exercising saved them from gaining much, much more.
3. I think it is ridiculous to make the claim that you have to exercise 60 minutes a day to just maintain weight. I have never recommended that much exercise to any of my clients. In fact some only have time to workout 3 days a week. They all have lost weight only working out when they can. The key is the intensity level. Study after study will show that higher intensity exercise burns more fat and overall calories than moderate and low levels do. You can literally workout half the time and lose more weight with a proper program. A moderate exercise program will probably burn around 300 calories per hour. If you can increase the intensity such as in strength training programs you can burn more than that in 30 minutes and will continue to burn more as your body recovers from the workout.
4. They mention on the story that exercise will not help with weight loss. Diet is the only this necessary for weight loss. I think this is a ridiculous claim. Yes you can lose weight without exercise but the weight you are losing is not just fat. You are also losing bone mass and muscle. Plus it will take much longer to see the scale go down with out exercise.
The take home message is simple. If you want to eat crap like fast food and processed sugars you probably will need to exercise a lot to maintain your weight. If you want to see real weight loss you have to clean up your diet program and start an effective complete exercise program like we do at San Diego Premier Training.
If you have any other questions or concerns about this study or your own exercise program please do not hesitate to contact me.
Mike
www.sandiegopremiertraining.com
www.myworkoutcreator.com
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