Thread: Exercise every day?

Hi again! Just wondered if its essential to exercise everyday? Since starting my diet I do 2hours of exercise a day including over an hour of jogging. Today I have been in town and food shopping but I just feel to shattered to contemplate any exercise. I had errands to do this morning then my hair done and with sorting the kids out i dont think iv got the energy!

Personally, I'm in the camp that exercise does not help much with weight loss. I wish it did! I play tennis all the time, and now weight lift 3 times a week with a trainer, but never lost weight from these activities.

So I wouldn't exercise to the point that you stress your self body such that you do not have energy at the end of the day. For me at least, I've had greatest success focusing on diet for weight loss. And feel great for it!

You might already know this, but if not, the does exercise cause weight loss idea has been debated quite a bit in America of late. It began when author Gary Taubes wrote an influential health book called Good Calories, Bad Calories in which he stated that studies to do support the idea that regular exercise leads to weight loss. I remember too that diet weight loss expert Dr Eades has written quite a bit about this same idea on his blog.

Hey there,

2hours!?Well done! that is fantastic!

Isnt 3x 30min a week the recommended amount?

I would say try do just 1hour a day or even take 2days off a week.

If it makes you feel really tired after awhile you wont be able to maintain it, and you'll get fed up off it.

Good Luck

wow you are dedicated! I think by not doing it today will give your body time to rest and recover.

well i do 3 hours of exercise 5 days a week in the gym. I think it just depends on how you exercise and ofcourse you have to sweat alot showing ur putting in the efford and i beieve it does work . Plus i walk alot during my 3 hour shift as i work in a hospital.

I was making the rounds at the doctor's blogs this evening and ran across a new entry by a British physician concerning weight loss and exercise. It seems the debate has come to UK now too. Thought to post what Dr Briffa has to mention on the idea of weight loss and exercise - does it work effectively.


More evidence comes in which suggests exercise does not do much in the weight loss stakes



It’s mid-January, and no doubt quite a lot of people will be persisting with New Year resolutions that have something to do with their health, with ‘losing weight’ being generally high on their list of priorities. Exercise is usually thrown into the mix here, and while walking my dog this morning I witnessed a distinct upturn in the number of joggers I normally see, despite the fact that there is quite a lot of snow and ice on the ground.

I am very much an advocate of exercise, and it certainly has a big part to play in fitness and health. However, I don’t rate it if weight loss (and even fat loss) is the ultimate aim. For more on this, see a previous post from August which attempts to explain why increasing exercise and activity is highly unlikely to lead to meaningful weight loss.

I was reminded of the relative inefficiency of exercise in terms of weight loss by a study published very recently in the journal Obesity [1]. It basically looked at the relationship between exercise and not weight loss, but weight regain (the regaining of weight after successful weight loss). The study assessed more than 4500 pre-menopausal women who had successfully lost weight (more than 5 per cent of their body weight over a two-year period), and then were followed-up over a 6-year period. Individuals who gained more than 30 per cent of the weight they had lost were defined as having been subject to ‘weight regain’.

The results of this study found that higher levels of physical activity were associated with less weight regain. For example, an increased in acitivity of 30 minutes per day was associated with reduced regain of 1.36 kg (3 lbs).

Risk of weight regain was reduced by about 30 per cent in women who maintained exercise at about 30 minutes or more per day.

More strenuous exercise was associated with more marked benefits. For example, jogging or running was associated with a reduced weight regain of 3.26 kg (7 lbs).

This study was epidemiological in nature, and therefore can only tell us about relationships between exercise and weight, and not that exercise definitely prevented weight regain. It might be, for instance, that those who exercise more also were more careful with their diets, and this accounted for some or all of the apparent benefit associated with exercise.

However, assuming for a moment that exercise did directly bring about the weight benefits seen, it occurs that there’s a lot of exercise going on here for relatively little benefit.

This study suggests that if, for example, you stepped up your exercise by 30 minutes per day over a six-year period, you could expect to be about 3 lbs lighter for it. That’s over 1000 hours of exercise to be not very much lighter at all.

The results are better for more strenuous activity, but a lot more effort would have to go into this too. Somehow, the thought of jogging or running for more than 1000 hours to be, at the end of it, 7 lbs lighter does not fill me with enthusiasm.

Let’s not draw too many conclusions from this study because, as I said, it is epidemiological in nature. However, its results do at least support the idea that, as strategies go, exercise is not particularly effective for the purposes of weight loss. Also, as the post I link to points out, intervention studies (studies which essentially compare the weight loss effects of exercising with non-exercising) have found the same thing. Taken as a whole, the logical conclusion is that exercise does not do much for weight loss.

This evidence does not, in my opinion, provide a good reason not to exercise. Activity and exercise likely enhance health and well-being in a variety of ways. However, I do think it’s important to be honest about what benefits are likely from any intervention. So, by all means take exercise, and preferably choose forms of this that are enjoyable and sustainable. And by all means lap up the psychological and physical benefits that can come as a result. Just don’t expect the exercise you take to help you lose much weight, that’s all.

References:

1. Mekary RA, et al. Physical Activity in Relation to Long-term Weight Maintenance After Intentional Weight Loss in Premenopausal Women Obesity 2010;18(1):167–174

Thank you for the replies. I did my weigh this morning. My BMI yesterday was 35.38. Today its 35.30. So eating right reallt does pay off! Thanks for your advice once again x

I think exercise does help, especially in keeping weight off. I lost nearly 3st and I kept it off for about 5 years (put a stone back on recently). When I was at uni my diet was really bad but I went to the gym for 2 hours 5 days pw and managed to maintain the same weight. After I left uni I stopped going to the gym but my diet stayed the same and I put on a stone.

x

It may be there is a link but it's more indirect. If you jog for 30 minutes, the jogging itself may not burn off all that many calories, but if it keeps you fit, then perhaps you either burn off more calories during the rest of the day, or have more energy to do other things besides eat.

Personally, I think that if there is a connection between exercise and loss of fat, it's psychological. "I just ran for 30 minutes. Is is worth cancelling it out by eating a sandwich?".

I agree it could be that!

I think that alot of people go wrong by exercising and looking purely at weight loss, and not measuring themselves.

Two people may have same height, same weight but since 1lb of fat has a greater mass, than 1lb of muscle you'll find someone with a higher body fat percentage would be larger.

I think exercise does help a lot with fitness, body toning and general health. As far as losing weight is concerned most of us overestimate the amount of calories we use during exercise.

Tracey