Doctors and researchers agree that it’s essential to combine exercise with calorie restriction in order to lose weight and keep it off in the long term. The mantra is “eat less, move more.” But how much more do you need to move?
A study appearing in September's Archives of Internal Medicine followed 201 women for two years. They were asked to keep their calories in the 1200 to 1500 range and they participated in a number of different exercise regimens. While all the groups lost weight, researchers found that those who lost 10% of their body weight and kept it off for at least two years were the women who increased their activity by four and a half hours every week. That comes to 39 minutes every day of activity beyond what they were doing before starting the intervention.
There’s no doubt that losing weight is a struggle and it doesn’t get any easier as we grow older. Exercise is essential to burn calories, boost metabolism and maintain muscle mass. If you don’t exercise when you’re cutting calories, you risk losing muscle as well as fat, which will only make your metabolism slow down further.
Daily exercise can be taking a brisk walk, riding a bike, swimming—anything that keeps you moving. And there will be many other benefits, like stress reduction, reduced risks of heart disease, stroke and some types of cancer, alleviation of depression, to name a few. Finding partners to exercise with is one of the best known ways to help you stick to a regimen. It also helps to choose an exercise that you enjoy.
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