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Cardiovascular Exercise Is Good for You, But Not Much Good for Weight Loss

By: Grace Isabel

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Fifty-eight obese men and women were analyzed for twelve weeks with cardiovascular exercise in a weight loss Australian study. Those involved in the program, exercised five times a week and burned roughly 500 calories each time. 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.

From this, we can surmise that there needs to be less importance placed on cardio exercise for the purpose of losing weight.

Please do not think that I am de-emphasizing the importance of cardiovascular exercise. We all recognize that cardiovascular exercise is good for you. Stress-relief, stronger stamina, lower cholesterol and blood pressure are some of it's benefits. Combined with a sensible, balanced diet, you'll get even better results. The research concluded, however, that cardio exercises should be de-emphasized for weight loss purposes.

Cardio is not the best weight loss component and should not be emphasized by magazines, health clubs, or personal trainers. Don't become a victim of the cardio weight-loss hype. If you depend on the calorie burning counters on cardiovascular machines, you are falling for the biggest fraud in fat loss today.

A treadmill run won't burn a big meal. A more reasonable option would be not to eat the second serving of pasta and place your attention on increasing your metabolism with weight training. Instead of stressing your body with monotonous cardio exercises, do away with them.

Once you grasp and believe how hard it is to lose fat through cardiovascular exercise alone, then you'll find the process to be quite simple. 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.

Here's another study that demonstrates how well diet works. As part of the study, men and women who were overweight went on a 12 week reduced calorie diet. They ended up losing over 36 pounds and 18 times more than the amount of weight lost by some of the participants in the cardiovascular study mentioned above. So you can see that you'll reduce more effectively by dieting than with cardiovascular exercise alone. However, there was a second part to the study worth noting.

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. People were able to retain a large portion of their original weight loss on both of the diets. However, fewer than 50% of the 180 dieters who participated in the analysis stayed in the program. Forty eight percent is a large number of drop-outs!

Conclusion: dieting is not the challenge, it's getting people to stick with it that's hard. That's why it's important to plan, find the right diet that works for you, and have good social support.

People don't diet because they are told it doesn't work. In reality, it's not that diets don't work, it's that PEOPLE don't work at it. Find the right diet for you. You will still have to work hard to lose weight even if you are eating properly.

Combine that with short well balanced workouts, (a combination strength training, cardiovascular and stretching). Avoid monotonous, dull, continuous cardiovascular exercises and, then the results that you deserve will be a reality.

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.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Rochester Health and Fitness Center NY, Certified Personal Trainers of RochesterNY and Rochester Athletic Club NY provide members quality service in fitness.

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