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Exercise
alone not enough for weight control
May 6, 04
Suzanne Havala Hobbs
How
often do you play this little game with yourself?
You stuff yourself with a big restaurant meal – drink,
chips and salsa, burrito with grated cheese and sour cream
– or a bowl of ice cream in front of the TV at night.
You rationalize that you’ll take a long walk tomorrow
or go to the gym to work it all off.
And the chances are, you never do.
Even if you did, could you do it every day? How realistic
is a good 60 minutes worth of moderately intense physical
activity?
That’s what the Institute of Medicine has concluded
that most of us need each day to maintain a healthy weight.
Some of us do it, but most of us don’t.
Nevertheless, physical activity often gets top billing these
days when it comes to dishing out advice on weight control.
The USDA in its latest iteration of the Dietary Guidelines
for Americans moved exercise to the No. 1 position in its
national list of recommendations for a healthy diet, ahead
of any advice about what to eat.
The food industry is all over this “exercise first”
kick. It’s not hard to understand why. It redirects
attention to our much-needed exercise goals and away from
the problem of overeating.
But for most of us, exercise alone isn’t likely to solve
our weight problems.
That’s not to say that exercise isn’t important.
It is – very much so. Not only does regular physical
activity control weight, it also confers other health benefits.
But it’s not enough. The practical fact is that most
of us will never work off our extra weight without taking
steps to make over our diets, too.
Think about it.
A 155-pound person would have to walk at a moderate pace for:
* Nearly 2_ hours to work off one Big Mac;
* More than 2 hours to work off a large order of fries;
* About 50 minutes to work off one glazed Krispy Kreme donut
(would you eat just one?);
* An hour and fifteen minutes to work off a one-cup bowl of
Breyers vanilla ice cream.
Pair the burger with the fries, add a drink … now you’re
talking a half-day hike to work off the calories.
A 130-pound person would have to use the stair machine for:
* An hour and fifteen minutes to work off a Chick-fil-A chicken
sandwich;
* One hour to work off a small slice of homemade chocolate
cake;
* About an hour to work off a small piece of store-bought
apple pie;
* About 50 minutes to work off 12 tortilla chips.
Each of us has different calorie needs depending upon our
height, weight, body build and composition, and level of activity.
But for the sake of illustration, let’s say that you
need 1800 calories per day to meet your weight goal –
whether that’s to maintain an ideal body weight or to
lose weight if you are overweight.
One fast-food meal of a sandwich, fries, and a drink can easily
consume three-quarters of that amount. And that’s just
one meal.
Add breakfast, lunch or dinner and a snack, and you’ve
greatly exceeded the 1800-calorie goal.
The point is, it’s highly unlikely that we’re
going to lose weight without a major overhaul of our diets.
Exercise can make a dent, but unless we all become triathletes
or marathon runners, we need to put every bit as much emphasis
or more on what we eat.
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