Yousif Aziz – Special To The Southern News –
Do you think exercise makes you lose or gain weight? Most of you would probably say lose weight because it’s not possible to gain weight if you exercise. Well guess what? Apparently if you work out there is a chance that you will gain weight instead of losing it.
According to Time Magazine’s, John Cloud, the author of the article The Myth About Exercisestated, “You’ve heard it for years: to lose weight, hit the gym. But while physical activity is crucial for good health, it doesn’t always melt pounds- in fact, it can add them.” John Cloud also adds by saying that, “One of the most widely accepted, commonly repeated assumptions in our culture is that if you exercise, you will lose weight. But I exercise all the time, and since I ended that relationship and cut most of those desserts, my weight has returned to the same 163 lb. It has been most of my adult life. I still have gut fat that hangs over my belt when I sit. Why isn’t all the exercise wiping it out?”
Healthy excersise starts with healthy eating habits.
In his article, Cloud brings to light interesting points regarding weight loss. What he proposes could shock you. One interesting point is that “a standard 20-oz. bottle of Gatorade contains 130 calories. If you’re hot and thirsty after a 20 minute run in summer heat, it’s easy to guzzle that bottle in 20 seconds, in which case the caloric expenditure and the caloric intake are probably a wash.” He adds sarcastically, “From a weight-loss perspective, you would have been better off sitting on the sofa knitting.”
Another point is when Cloud mentions that more than 45 million Americans now belong to a health club. A study was published which was supervised by Dr. Timothy Church. He had a team “randomly assigned into four groups 464 overweight women who didn’t regularly exercise. Women in three of the groups were asked to work out with a personal trainer for 72 minute, 136 minute and 194 minute intervals per week for six months. Women in the fourth group, which was the control group, were told to keep up their usual physical activities. All the women were asked not to change their dietary habits and to fill out monthly questionnaires.”
The results were shocking and “surprising.” The women in the fourth group lost weight, but the women who exercised and were sweating it with a trainer for six months did not lose much more weight than the fourth group did. “Some of the women in each of the four groups actually gained weight,”
It is hard to believe that the women who did workout harder didn’t lose more weight than the women who didn’t work out as much. The key point here is healthy eating. It is all about what you eat. You can exercise all you want, you can sweat it out and you can go hardcore with all types of exercises, but if you don’t take care of what you eat, then it is all going down the drain.
People have to understand that the have to eat healthy if they want to exercise. If you are committed to working out, then you might as well commit to eating healthy. What is the point of working out if you reward yourself with blueberry muffins, pizza, and all types of junk food? All the calories that you burned will come back right away. The concept behind gaining weight even though you exercise is because we humans tend to stimulate hunger after working out; therefore, we feel that our bodies should be rewarded and thus we forget the idea that healthy eating is essential. We eat whatever seems appealing to us regardless of how many calories that food contains.
