What’s Best for Keeping Weight Off: Diet or Exercise?

New research takes on the age-old question—and the answer may surprise you.

By Danielle Zickl

Apr 23, 2019

 

Brian Barnhart

• Working out is just as important as diet when it comes to maintaining weight loss, according to new research out of the University of Colorado.
• Those who had lost weight and maintained it burned about 300 calories more a day than those who had normal body weights in the beginning of the study. (And of those calories burned, 180 of them were burned through physical activity.)
• The research suggests that physical activity, rather than reducing calorie intake, was responsible for keeping the weight off.

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If you’ve ever heard the saying, “abs are made in the kitchen,” you’re not alone. The saying suggests that what you eat is more important to keeping off unwanted pounds than hitting the gym or going for a ride. But now, there’s research to suggest that the opposite might be true—at least when it comes to maintaining any weight you’ve already lost.

Published in the journal Obesity, researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Health and Wellness Center compared those who had already lost weight and maintained it for a year (and weighed around 150 pounds) to two other groups of people: those with a normal body weight (around 150 pounds, similar body mass of weight loss maintainers) and those who were overweight (around 213 pounds, similar BMI to what the weight loss maintainers had before they lost weight).

Participants’ total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), or the amount of calories they burned, were measured through urine samples. Their metabolic rates were also measured in order to know much of their TDEE each day came from resting versus physical activity.

During the course of the study, all of the groups maintained their weight—meaning that the total energy expenditure, or the number of calories they burned per day, was equal to the amount of calories they took in.

The researchers found that total energy expenditure in the weight loss maintainers was greater than those of the normal weight group, and similar to that of the overweight group.

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This suggests that the people who had lost weight before and kept it off were taking in a similar amount of calories as the overweight group.

So why weren’t the weight loss maintainers gaining it all back? The researchers believe it comes down to their increased level of physical activity: The weight loss maintainers burned about 300 calories more a day than those who were a similar weight—180 of which came from physical activity.

For one, the weight loss maintainers were taking more steps per day than everyone else—12,100 versus 8,900 (normal bodyweight group) and 6,500 (overweight group).

When a person loses weight, their body experiences several metabolic adaptations that attempt to get their body back to their starting weight, said study coauthor Danielle Ostendorf, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at the Colorado University Anschutz Health and Wellness Center. You burn fewer calories at a lower body weight than a heavier weight. So you either have the reduce your calorie intake or increase your calorie burn (through physical activity)—or a combination of the two—to keep the weight off.  “Based on our study’s findings, it appears as if the successful weight loss maintainers are relying more on energy expenditure through physical activity rather than a reduction in their caloric intake,” she told Runner’s World.

The bottom line? Exercise is just as important as diet when it comes to the maintenance phase of losing weight, if not more so. However, Ostendorf points out that everyone is different.

“Some individuals can maintain weight loss successfully through diet and not as much physical activity, whereas others may require very high levels of physical activity,” she said. “The best strategy is the one that works for that individual, so trying different things to see what works can be an important step to successfully maintaining weight loss longterm.”

From: Runner's World US

A Bad Diet Is More Deadly Than Smoking or High Blood Pressure

The researchers pinned down which dietary habits are most problematic.

By Jordan Smith

Apr 4, 2019

Layla Dartry / EyeEmGetty Images

• A new study published in the Lancet found that, poor diet is responsible for more than 1 in 5 deaths globally, making it more deadly than tobacco and high blood pressure.
• Consuming both low amounts of healthy foods and high amounts of unhealthy foods are key to these findings.
• Diets high in sodium and low in whole grains and fruits had the strongest link to worldwide causes of death.

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What you put on your plate can play a serious role in how likely you are to die before your time: According to a new study in the Lancet, a poor diet is actually the leading cause of death worldwide, contributing to more of them than conventional risk factors like tobacco use and high blood pressure.

In the study, researchers analyzed food consumption habits of adults ages 25 and older from 1990 to 2017 in 195 countries and compared how that affected their chances of premature death.

They found that in 2017, 11 million deaths—or 22 percent—worldwide were caused by poor diet. More specifically? Of these deaths, 9.5 million were due to cardiovascular disease, over 900,000 to diet-related cancers, over 330,000 to diabetes, and over 136,000 to kidney diseases.

On the other hand, more commonly known risk factors like high blood pressure and tobacco use was linked to 10.4 million and 8 million deaths, respectively. Researchers also found that poor diet is linked to more years lived with disability, too.

“Poor diet is an equal opportunity killer,” lead study author Ashkan Afshin, Ph.D., an assistant professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, told Runner’s World.

As for what made the diets so poor? There were three main things that affected risk of early death most strongly: high intake of sodium (more than 3 grams a day), low intake of whole grains (less than 125 grams a day), and low intake of fruits (less than 250 grams a day). Additionally, diets low in nuts and seeds and low in vegetables were also top contributors.

In fact, nut consumption had the largest gap between optimal consumption and actual—people only ate 12 percent of the recommended 20.5-gram intake. On the opposite end, consumption of processed meat is 90 percent higher than the recommended 2-gram intake.

A bad diet can mess with your body in many ways. Not only can it increase your risk of obesity, which comes with its own health risks, including heart disease, but getting too much or too little of specific nutrients can also hurt your health in other ways, too. A diet low in fruit is associated with an increased risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease; diets high in sodium can increase risk of stomach cancer; and diets low in fiber can increase risk of colon cancer, Afshin explained.

So though it is important to limit your intake of sodium and added sugar, it is just as beneficial to make sure you are subbing them wisely, by increasing your consumption of fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and vegetables.

From: Runner's World US

How Much Weight Can You Lose in a Month?

It may be less than you’d expect. A doctor explains.

By Jenessa Connor

A goal without a plan is just a dream. So if you’re committed to shedding a few pounds, it makes sense to have a timeline and measurable benchmarks, right?

Sure, crack open your bullet journal, but don’t get too hung up on the numbers, says Susan Besser, M.D., family medicine expert with Mercy Personal Physicians at Overlea in Baltimore. “Rather, work on a healthier lifestyle—the weight loss will come,” she says. Exercise regularly, watch your portions, and choose whole foods over processed ones, and you can expect to slim down over time.

But if metrics are crucial to your motivation, both Besser and The Centers for Disease Control agree that the average person should strive for a little over a pound a week, or about four to five pounds per month. “The typical calorie deficit for most diets is about 500 calories a day. That translates to about one pound a week,” Besser explains. For most people, a 500-calorie shift in intake is manageable and, therefore, sustainable in the long run. Skip that afternoon latte, and you’re halfway there.

Tempted to wage a more aggressive plan of attack? Slashing additional calories may help you drop more weight in the same amount of time, but the long-term outcomes could be less than desirable. As anyone who’s ever undergone a food challenge or juice cleanse can attest, drastic diet changes are difficult to maintain. It’s easy to get frustrated with seemingly impossible restrictions and backslide into old habits (and pants sizes). Plus, Besser says, rapid weight loss can have negative health effects. “Fast weight loss can cause loss of muscle mass rather than fat, and if you are eating unhealthily, you could cause metabolic changes and make yourself ill," she says.

Better to stick with a slow and steady approach, keeping in mind that general guidelines offer a baseline for weight loss, but human metabolism is more complex than a simple equation. An individual dieter’s actual results can be affected by myriad variables.

First of all, there’s your starting weight. “The heavier you are, the more weight you will lose in a month,” says Besser. Your sex is also a factor, as, thanks to hormonal makeup and body composition, men tend to lose weight faster than women. Additionally, certain medical conditions and medications, including steroids and anti-depressants, may cause weight gain in certain people and, therefore, hinder weight loss.

And even those who have consistently dropped a pound or more a week will most likely stall out or “plateau” before reaching their ultimate goal. “As your body loses weight, your metabolism slows down,” Besser says. “It becomes harder to lose the weight without either more exercise or fewer calories." In other words, what worked for you six months ago may not continue to work for the now smaller version of you.

It’s also important to note that the numbers on the scale aren’t always the best indicators of progress, especially if your exercise routine includes resistance training (which it should). "You may be gaining muscle mass from the exercise,” Besser says. “Muscle is heavier than fat, so the scale may not reflect the change,” Besser says. In addition to tracking your weight, pay attention to how your clothes fit or snap a pic every couple weeks for easy side-by-side comparisons.

The bottom line: Weight loss goals are fine, but avoid blindly chasing an arbitrary number. Focus on forming better habits that are sustainable long term, and the rest will fall into place.

What’s Best for Weight Loss: Sprints, HIIT, or Steady-State Cardio?

New research pulls in data from 36 studies to answer the question.

By Danielle Zickl

• Interval training could help you lose more weight than a continuous moderate-intensity workout, according to a new review and meta-analysis published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
• Interval training may make your body more efficient at burning fat, the researchers believe.
• Still, because interval training is more taxing on your body, you need two to three days of recovery between sessions. So you shouldn’t do them daily.

As cyclists, we’re always looking for ways to get faster—and incorporating interval training into our regular routines definitely helps. But new research shows that interval training can do more than just give your performance a boost: It can also help you shed pounds, if that’s your goal.

In the review and meta-analysis, which was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researchers crunched the data from 36 previous studies involving 1,012 people that compared the effects of interval training with continuous moderate-intensity exercise over at least four weeks’ time.

Study authors split interval training into two categories: HIIT and sprint interval training. They defined HIIT as exercise that’s done at 80 percent or more of your max heart rate, and sprint interval training as exercise that’s equal to or higher than your VO2 max (in oth

er words, an all-out effort). While the protocols for each varied among the studies, the most widely-used HIIT routine included 4 minutes of high-intensity work followed by 3 minutes of recovery. As for sprints, most used 30 seconds of “all-out” effort alternated with 4 minutes of recovery, or 8 seconds of work with 12 seconds of recovery.

Moderate-intensity exercise is defined as a continuous effort that where you hit 55 to 70 percent of your max heart rate or 40 to 60 percent of your VO2 max. Again, steady-state routines varied, but ranged from 10 to 60 minutes, with those of 40 to 45 minutes, and 29 to 35 minutes, as the most common.

The findings? While people lost weight and body fat from both types of interval training (HIIT and sprint) and continuous moderate-intensity exercise, interval training as a whole was more effective. Those who did either kind of interval training lost about 29 percent more weight than those who did continuous moderate-intensity exercise.

“Interval training seems to change your metabolism, and higher intensity exercise seems to promote many physiological changes that might favor long-term weight loss,” study coauthor Paulo Gentil, Ph.D., a professor in the department of physical education and dance at the Universidade Federal de Goiás in Brazil, told Runner’s World. “In other words, it makes your body more efficient in burning fat.”

Moderate intensity, on the other hand, doesn’t cause the same changes to your metabolism as higher intensity training does, according to Gentil.

“While [moderate-intensity exercise] burns fat and calories during its performance, it’s been shown that, after its cessation, there are metabolic changes that might make fat loss difficult and favor fat accumulation,” he said. “While that does not mean that low to moderate intensity exercise will make people gain fat, it suggests that the metabolic adaptation to this form of exercise might, at least partially, compensate for the fat [burned] during exercise.”

But just because the research found that intervals are better for weight loss, it does’t mean more intervals are even better. Because these kinds of workouts are more taxing on your body, you shouldn’t do them as often as you do easy runs.

So if you did a really tough speed workout, for instance, that depleted most of your glycogen stores, you will need two to three days of recovery time before you do another one, according to Gentil.

And if you do have a weight-loss goal, you also need to pay attention to what you’re putting on your plate in addition to what kind of exercise you’re doing. Gentil also points out that healthy eating is an important part of weight loss, too, and that pairing a good diet with interval training is the best way ensure weight loss success.

From: Runner's World US

90-Year-Old Spin Instructor...Can You Keep Up

90-Year-Old Spin Instructor Will Take You on a ‘Destination Ride’ in a Class You Won’t Forget

Don’t expect Bob Mendelson to go easy on you: His hill climbs are killer.

By Kelly Laffey

 

Bob Mendelson sits at the front of the class at the Wellbridge Athletic Club in St. Louis. As the pedals start spinning, music from every era of his 90 years on earth plays over the speakers: legendary Broadway composer Cole Porter, recordings from the Stanford University marching band, and even Top 100 tunes.

The 90-year-old St. Louis native discovered spin classes 20 years ago at a now-shuttered health club he used to go to. There was a dark room filled with bikes that everyone kept going into. One day, he decided to join them. “It took me awhile to get used to the moves,” he says. “At the beginning, it was just work. I didn’t start off with a natural spinning talent.”

Still, he kept going. And soon after starting, some friends from the club approached him. They wanted the now-retired professor at the front of the class.

“A couple of the people there said, ‘You know a little bit about music,’ and ‘You’ve taught, so why don’t you teach spinning?’” Mendelson says. “So I got certified, and when that club closed, some of my friends went over to Wellbridge. They mentioned my name to the people who are running the show, and they wanted to meet me, and that’s it. That was six years ago.”

Mendelson took his years as a urban planning professor at Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville and adapted what he learned there to the studio. That’s why he does more than just play music and shepherd his classes through workouts: He takes them on destination rides—journeys from his life.

Using his knowledge of urban planning, he takes class through history lessons about the landscapes of some of his favorite places: Boston, where he was stationed as an officer in the Coast Guard during the Korean War; Pittsburgh, where a dear friend lives, as well as through San Francisco, Chicago, Miami, and, of course, his hometown of St. Louis.

I don’t spend time saying your head’s too low, your body is this, your body is that. The great athletes I know aren’t dictated by form. They’re great athletes because of their spirit.

Similar to a lesson plan, each ride begins with a drawing, where Mendelson maps out the sections of the specific city he’d like to incorporate. He then divides the journey—both around the city and down memory lane—into five segments.

“Each segment is a type of topography, and then I work very hard to have four or five songs that fit that [landscape],” he says.

Then his creations come to life in the studio. Take St. Louis for example. One of the rides hosted “there” is called “Eastern European Immigrants, 1880-2018,” where he tracks his family’s journey from Latvia to Missouri. Proud of his Jewish heritage, he features music written or performed by people of Jewish ancestry for that ride.

“I started out with the dances from West Side Story and Hava Nagila,” he says. “Then I did Paula Abdul and Lady Gaga and Drake and contemporary young singers. I loved it!”

For six years, Mendelson has enjoyed the community he has fostered at the athletic club. Fitness classes often have a propensity for becoming individualistic endeavor; it’s all too common for workout enthusiasts to spend an hour in the darkness with their heads down and their heart rate up.

In contrast, Mendelson speaks excitedly about all of his students, like the who told him that her grandfather went to his same high school. Or 1984 Olympic gold medal cyclist Mark Gorski, a friend of his son, who was in class the other day. “He was terrific and he wanted to come back, so I gave him a pass,” Mendelson says.

These experiences speak to the inclusive environment that the nonagenarian’s classes radiate. His teaching philosophy emphasizes a rider’s tenacity over perfect spin posture.

“I don’t spend time saying your head’s too low, your body is this, your body is that,” he says. “The great athletes I know aren’t dictated by form. They’re great athletes because of their spirit.”

But the rides aren’t just a study in geography. They double as a lesson in the power of the human spirit. Mendelson works out for 2.5 hours each day and teaches at least one spin session a week.

And don’t be fooled by his upbeat attitude or his age. That just masks how challenging the classes can be. At an age where most people have slowed down, Mendelson encourages his riders up rolling hills and down steep terrain. When things get tough—both in class and out—he’ll remind students that, “the big events come to us. We don’t create them. What we have control over is how we face them.”

Mendelson celebrated his milestone birthday in Boston two months ago, and he has no plans to retire from spin any time soon. He’s learned that you have to take life as it comes to you, and he gains satisfaction from facing the challenges head-on. “Life is work,” he says. “When you feel terrible or you feel like staying in bed, you get up and keep going forward.”