Exercise helps keep weight off....

Today's Post, Thursday, 5-14-2009

A study was done where several groups of people were given a health oriented and moderately calorie restricted diet.

After 6 months, all the groups were requested to maintain healthy eating but were no longer trying to restrict calories as much. In the first 6 months the diet only group lost about 6 percent of their bodyweight. The group that also did fitness exercises lost about the same or 7 %. The second exercise group who did light strength training on a vibrating device or a pillow like device that some gyms have now that requires you to use your core muscles to balance as you exercise, lost 11 percent of their body weight. (The control group that neither tried to eat better or exercise gained weight!)


But the really important two discoveries were what happened in the follow up after the second six months.

1. Both the exercise groups kept the weight off. But the diet only group gained it all back.

THAT to me is the big payoff from this study.

Why lose fat if you are destined to get it back?

And, if you can take off ugly and dangerous excess fat and keep it off why not get rid of it?

The difference in this study was from continuing to exercise in addition to eating slightly better.

That’s huge.

2. The second discovery was almost as important.:

The exercise group who were in the vibration group not only lost nearly twice as much fat weight, the added fat loss came off their bellies. And the researchers believe they lost “intra-abdominal” fat, the fat that is hidden inside instead of on the surface & that is associated with helping cause type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Clearly it would be motivating to lose twice as much fat and more than double your health improvement if you could do so.

But what if you don’t have access to a gym, let alone one that has this equipment?

No worries. There are several kinds of exercise that will do the same or very similar job as exercising on the vibrating platform did.

One of the least expensive ones is jumping rope. And another you can do at home that has similar effects on fat loss to jumping rope but is lower impact is using a mini-trampoline. The Urban Rebounder has gotten good fat loss results just as jumping rope has and is available new for less than $200. See http://www.urbanrebounding.com . You can do these exercises at home so there is no travel time. And once you build up to doing them vigorously, even ten minute sessions work well.

Both of these exercises cause you to do three things that make them as effective as exercising on the vibrating platform. To do them well you need to jump which both requires quick muscle contractions and for you to lift your entire bodyweight quite frequently. And, third, no two jumps are exactly the same and you need to use your core muscle to stay balance and to lift your knees for each jump.

Lastly, you can do strength training for two to six sessions a week plus doing interval cardio with jumping rope or using the mini-trampoline for as little as 10 minutes each time for several times a week.

Both kinds of exercise, strength training and interval cardio are known to cause you to burn calories for HOURS after you stop exercising. This study suggests exercising on a vibrating platform has similar effects.