We have more evidence!!!
Earlier this week, a friend of mine posted a link to a recent research article that brought a smile to my face. He posted an article looking at combatting the obesity epidemic in our country. Guess what! It confirmed what we have known for a long time! For decades, we have been told that the best way to confront weight gain was to increase our aerobic exercise. We were told increasing aerobic exercise will burn more calories... The reality is that the combination of resistance and aerobic exercise is the best approach to fighting obesity. Who knew? (We did...)
This study looked at nearly 12,000 adults with a BMI of less than 30 in the Dallas area. After a 6 year period, they compared the rate of obesity in groups who focused on Resistance Exercise alone, at least twice per week, to a group who did both Resistance and Aerobic Exercise, at least twice per week, and a group who did not do any resistance exercise. I bet you can't possibly guess what the outcome was... You guessed it the combination is the best option. This outcome echos just about all of the research that has come before this study.
To be fair, there are some limitations to this study (but there almost always are...). My biggest question is how did they determine what constituted resistance exercise? Unfortunately, the type of exercise is "self-reported." Meaning it was subjective in nature. So one person could do bicep curls with a 5 lb weight and consider it resistance exercise, while another could be deadlifting 400 lbs. Those are obviously VERY different levels of resistance. The other limitation that stands out is that this study did not look at their nutrition. Obviously, nutrition is a very important part of the obesity equation. Unfortunately, it is difficult to control all of these variables and make a meaningful comparison.
The simple take-away from this study is this -
When you exercise, make sure to combine resistance training and aerobic training, and make sure to do it at least twice per week if you would like to prevent the onset of obesity!
Earlier this week, a friend of mine posted a link to a recent research article that brought a smile to my face. He posted an article looking at combatting the obesity epidemic in our country. Guess what! It confirmed what we have known for a long time! For decades, we have been told that the best way to confront weight gain was to increase our aerobic exercise. We were told increasing aerobic exercise will burn more calories... The reality is that the combination of resistance and aerobic exercise is the best approach to fighting obesity. Who knew? (We did...)
This study looked at nearly 12,000 adults with a BMI of less than 30 in the Dallas area. After a 6 year period, they compared the rate of obesity in groups who focused on Resistance Exercise alone, at least twice per week, to a group who did both Resistance and Aerobic Exercise, at least twice per week, and a group who did not do any resistance exercise. I bet you can't possibly guess what the outcome was... You guessed it the combination is the best option. This outcome echos just about all of the research that has come before this study.
To be fair, there are some limitations to this study (but there almost always are...). My biggest question is how did they determine what constituted resistance exercise? Unfortunately, the type of exercise is "self-reported." Meaning it was subjective in nature. So one person could do bicep curls with a 5 lb weight and consider it resistance exercise, while another could be deadlifting 400 lbs. Those are obviously VERY different levels of resistance. The other limitation that stands out is that this study did not look at their nutrition. Obviously, nutrition is a very important part of the obesity equation. Unfortunately, it is difficult to control all of these variables and make a meaningful comparison.
The simple take-away from this study is this -
When you exercise, make sure to combine resistance training and aerobic training, and make sure to do it at least twice per week if you would like to prevent the onset of obesity!
Movement is my medicine,
