I wanted to talk about something today I found interesting. So often you hear about the latest health study and what a particular expert found out about this disease or that one and how it is effected by diet and exercise. Yesterday it was the effects of breast cancer and diet and exercise. Obviously if you have a good diet and you exercise you will be healthier and reduce your risk of getting certain cancers. But what I found interesting was they had people try various things to lose weight. Some of the participants just dieted, some just exercised and some dieted and exercised. What they found was the people that either just dieted or dieted and exercised lost weight and the people that just exercised didn’t lose any weight. I thought to myself, how can this be? Why didn’t the people who exercised lose any weight? The more I thought about it the more upset I became. Why did this upset me, well I will tell you…
1. Telling the general public about a study about health will have an influence on the them. If you hear people only lost weight when they dieted you may be more willing to just diet instead of exercising and eating healthy when really you should be doing both. I feel it is irresponsible to tell people exercising is not an effective way to lose weight.
2. Why didn’t the people who were exercising lose any weight? What were they doing as exercise? If they were exercising but not losing weight, then they may not have been exercising correctly. I am sure they were doing what most doctors and personal trainers told them to do and it probably was not effective. The mainstream ideas of what diet are not the best way to maintain a healthy weight. I have made huge leaps and bounds in my own body doing other things than what is generally accepted. Exercises that incorporate high intesity interval training work much better than running on a treadmill for a long time.
3. Also, what were those people eating? If the exercise was not working, were they eating foods that were counteracting their exercising efforts? I just want to know all of these facts before we decide that something did or did not work. Please give me all the details.
I guess the point I want to make to you is, when you hear about a study that has to do with diet and exercise take it with a grain of salt. We have no idea what the diet or the exercise was and if it actually was effective. Don’t change your life because of what any study says. You just do what you know is right. Eat well and exercise effectively.