Myth of Moderate Exercise

Conventional medical wisdom is that daily exercise is essential for good health.  The problem is that conventional medical wisdom has seen it’s most basic “truths” challenged and replaced with more modern and up to date theories.  Whether daily exercise can really lead to long-term weight loss is debatable.

What has become increasingly clear is that the conventionally accepted advice of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity activity most days of the week…is probably insufficient to spur any real change in a person's body weight.

A study published in the 07/08 edition of the Archives of Internal Medicine concludes that, when it comes to exercise for weight loss, more is better.  It suggests that obese people would have to exercise at least an hour at a time to see any significant difference in their weight.  In the study, the biggest weight losers were active a full 68 minutes a day, five days a week (about 55 minutes a day more than they had been before the trial began), burning an extra 1,848 calories a week.

At 6 months into the study, most of the participants, including the successful ones, relapsed and started gaining the weight back.  "The major outcome of this paper is the maintenance issue," one author says.  Once a patient hits their target weight, it's imperative that they stick with an exercise and diet lifestyle to maintain proper weight.

The word to the wise from this research is that you should know what it takes to get where you want to go and, once there, don’t quit!