WHY EXERCISE MATTERS
Sorry, you can’t outrun a bad diet
Hoping to shimmy into those skinny jeans by spending more time on the treadmill?
Sorry, say experts, you’re out of luck. Exercise, while enormously beneficial for maintaining a healthy weight, doesn’t tend to be effective for shedding pounds. The best way to trim the flab is to minimize the food on your plate.
“You cannot outrun a bad diet,” as an editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine put it.
“Yes, exercise would work if you did enough of it — it’s just so much easier to eat less,” says James Hill, professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora. It takes mere seconds to scarf a 200-calorie candy bar, but 40 minutes of walking to burn that off.
Some people — about 15% of us — may even find that exercise makes them much hungrier, countering weight loss goals, says Dr. Tim Church, a professor of preventive medicine at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La.
But exercise does play a key role: It helps keep weight off once you’ve lost it. Since 1994, Hill has tracked more than 10,000 people in the National Weight Control Registry who shed an average of 66 pounds each and kept it off for more than five years. “Only 9% of them maintain their weight without significant exercise — so it’s possible, but it’s very rare,” Hill says.
For one thing, it’s hard to cut food calories over the long term. Exercise, on the other hand, burns added calories. It also improves metabolism, including how the body manages blood sugar and appetite. You’re giving yourself a “safety margin” for those days when you eat a bit too much.
In addition to keeping trim, exercise is good for the heart, the liver and other essential organs, studies show. It even helps the brain by alleviating depression and anxiety, and by warding off cognitive decline later in life.
“You name it, exercise helps it,” Church says.
Hill says those who’ve lost a lot of weight and don’t want to regain it should exercise for 70 minutes a day. That could include going to the gym or playing Pokemon Go.
“Figure out what works for you,” Church says.