Fifty-eight obese men and women were analyzed for twelve weeks with cardiovascular exercise in a weight loss Australian study. Each person in the study burnt 500 calories per session, five times a week. You will be surprised by the results. Overall, the group lost an average of 7 pounds below the expected weight loss! Worse, of the 58 participants 26 lost only 2 pounds in 12 weeks, despite sweating out for almost 60 hours.
Conclusion: we need to reduce the overemphasis of cardiovascular exercise on weight loss.
Please do not think that I am de-emphasizing the importance of cardiovascular exercise. Everyone knows that cardiovascular exercises improve your health. It relaxes you, increases your endurance, reduces cholesterol readings, and alleviates hypertension. If combined with a smart, nutritious diet, you will see even greater results. However, researchers concluded, that “From a public health perspective, cardiovascular exercise should be encouraged and the emphasis on weight loss reduced.
Personal trainers, periodicals and fitness clubs are guilty of presenting cardiovascular exercise as the magic pill for losing weight, when this is clearly not the case at all. Do not give in to the cardiovascular trap. The calorie counters that are part of the typical cardiovascular machines are less than accurate when in comes to measuring fat loss and calories burned.
You mustn’t kid yourself into thinking that you can erase the effects of overeating by doing extra cardio exercise. Just don’t eat that second serving of lasagna and instead build your body’s metabolism through strength training. Rather than wearing your body down with repetitive cardiovascular exercises, just say NO to cardio!
As soon as you realize how difficult it is to drop fat by doing cardio alone, you’ll discover how simple the weight loss is. It is necessary for you to do some prep work – plan your meals ahead of time , map out your strength training workouts so that you’re never lost in the middle of it, get your social network or workout partner in place, and be ready for obstacles that you know might come up.
Let us focus on a different study, which exemplifies the effectiveness of the diet. As part of the study, men and women who were overweight went on a 12 week reduced calorie diet. In the end, they lost 36 pounds – which translates to 18 times the weight lost by most of the participants in the aforementioned cardiovascular study. That just shows you that diet is superior to cardiovascular exercise for weight loss. Unfortunately, there is a second part to the study that I should mention.
Those who participated were divided into two separate groupings. For 12 months, one group of subjects went on a high-protein diet while the other group went on a high-carbohydrate diet. At the end of the 12-month study, both groups on average gained back 4 pounds! The bottom line is that the two groups gained an equal number of pounds. Both “diets” helped people maintain a large portion of their original weight loss. However, only 47% of the total number of subjects who started the study (180 in all) completed both parts. Which is really a high number of dropouts.
This shows you that the hardest thing about losing weight is getting people to stay with a diet, not the actual diet itself. That’s where planning, finding the right diet that works for you and social support, come in.
The adage “diets don’t work” is merely an excuse which enables people to avoid dieting outright. The problem actually lies not in the diets but rather in the dieters. Continue to look for the diet that will work for you. Remember that even when you find the right diet, it will still take hard work and tenacity on your part.
Add short well balanced workouts — strength training, cardiovascular and stretching. Keep-off from doing repetitive cardiovascular exercise that take a long time to get results and you will finally see the results that you deserve.
1 Br J Sports Med. 2009 Sep 29. Beneficial effects of exercise: shifting the focus from body weight to other markers of health. King N, Hopkins M, Caudwell P, Stubbs J, Blundell J.
2 Am J Clin Nutr. 2009 Sep 30. One-year weight maintenance after significant weight loss in healthy overweight and obese subjects: does diet composition matter? Delbridge EA, Prendergast LA, Pritchard JE, Proietto J.
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