HEALTH Why exercise beats dieting
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from July 1987.
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• Exercise burns calories while you're working out.
• Exercise speeds up metabolism — your body burns calories at a higher rate than if you had not exercised.
• By contrast, dieting without exercise slows down your metabolism — the body's baseline rate of burning calories — by about 20%. That means that while you're eating less, you're burning calories at a slower than normal rate.
• Exercise builds and preserves muscle, while it burns body fat.
• Following a very low-calorie diet plan of less than 800 calories a day may cause muscle loss; a conservative estimate is one pound of muscle lost for every 3 of fat.
• Weight, lost by dieting alone and regained, tends to return in the form of fat — and at an accelerated rate.
• Exercise allows you to eat more, and still maintain a weight loss.
• Dieting can make you irritable, but exercise gives you more energy and decreases stress.
• Exercise can be a lot more fun than dieting.
• Exercise directly fights the diseases of obesity — high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol.
Weight Loss
QUIZ
1. A panel of medical experts recently concluded that an obese person is one who is
a) 40% overweight
b) 25% overweight
c) 20% overweight
2. The major cause of obesity is
a) lack of exercise
b) a high-fat diet
c) genetics
3. An excess of 50 to 100 calories a day beyond your energy needs can result in an annual increase of
a) 10 to 15 pounds of fat
b) 5 to 10 pounds of fat
c) 20 to 25 pounds of fat
4. To lose one pound per week, you need a daily calorie deficit of
a) 350
b) 500 c) 750
5. The best way to lose weight and stay healthy is to a) follow a low-fat diet b) consume less than 1,000 calories per day c) eat a sensible diet and exercise aerobically Myth: It's natural for adults to gain weight as they age.
Fact: It may be typical, but not natural. If you look at other cultures, where sedentary life-styles and high fat and processed foods are rare, older people tend to lose weight as they grow older. This is due to a natural loss of muscles mass that occurs as the body ages.
Ideally, after about age 20, there should be no weight gain, assuming you weren't overweight or underweight at 20. However, even if you remain the same weight as you were at 20, your percentage of body fat will probably increase as lean muscle weight is lost in the normal aging process.
But you have the power to slow down the aging process for staying lean. Eat a low fat diet and maintain a healthy fat-to-lean (muscle) ratio with regular exercise. Answers to Quiz:
1. c) 2. a) 3. b) 4. b) 5. c)
