PEOPLE TYPICALLY LOWER RISKS OF HEART DISEASE AND PREMATRURE DEATH FOR MORE BY GAINING FITNESS THAN BY DROPPING WEIGHT.
- Research overwhelmingly shows that people who start to exercise rarely lose much, if any, weight, unless they also cut back substantially on food intake. Exercise simply burns too few calories, in general, to aid in weight reduction. We also tend to compensate for some portion of the meagre caloric outlay from exercise by eating more afterward or moving less or unconsciously dialing back on our bodies’ metabolic operations to reduce overall daily energy expenditure. People who shed pounds by dieting regained them, then tried again, a yo-yo approach to weight loss that often contributes to metabolic problems like diabetes and high cholesterol and lower life expectancy.
- Overweight and obese people with significant health problems, including high blood pressure, poor cholesterol profiles or insulin resistance, a marker for Type 2 diabetes, showed considerable improvements in those conditions after they started exercising, whether they dropped any weight or not.
- Sedentary, obese men and women who begin to exercise and improve their fitness can lower their risk of premature death by as much as 30 percent or more, even if their weight does not budge. This improvement generally puts them at lower risk of early death than people who are considered to be of normal weight but out of shape.
- People with obesity usually lose some visceral fat when they exercise even if their overall weight loss is negligible. Visceral fat, which collects deep inside our bodies, raises risks for Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and other conditions.
- Exercise likewise alters molecular signaling inside other fat cells in ways that may improve insulin resistance, no matter how much weight someone carries.
Excerpts taken from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/well/move/exercise-weight-loss-longer-life.html
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