Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Facts and Fallacies About Exercise And Losing Weight

12:25 PM

Admin Aldino Car Rent

ARE YOU DIETING LONGER and harder than necessary because you don't realize what exercise can do for you? Do you believe that exercise "doesn't help" or is "actually counterproductive" to weight loss? It's time, then, for you to get straight on some facts and fallacies about losing weight.

Fallacy: Physical activity makes you so hungry that you're bound to eat more and put on more weight than you could possibly have lost.

Fact: An increase in energy expenditure may cause an immediate appetite increase, but a study of students at the University of Michigan showed that a quarter-mile or mile run had no measurable effect on their 24-hour caloric intake indeed, as Dr. Brian J. Sharkey says in Physiological Fitness and Weight Control, exhausting effort or exercise just before a meal can dull the appetite and cause caloric intake to fall below expenditure.

Fallacy: Exercise is virtually useless unless you devote a lot of time and effort to it.

Fact: According to studies by the Harvard School of Public Health, as little as one half-hour of moderate exercise each day can take off as much as 26 punds in a year if you don't increase your caloric intake.

Fallacy: Exercise is beneficial only if you can feel it; it won't help you unless it hurts.

Fact: Generally, exercise, such as jogging and swimming, should not hurt; if it does, you may be overdoing it. It's better to exercise regularly than to make occasional superhuman efforts, since you can not "store" the benefits of exercising.

Fallacy: The only benefit of vigorous as opposed to mild exercise is to the heart and lungs; from a weight-loss point of view, it's just as good to walk for two hours (burning 420 calories) as it is to run for 28 minutes (burning 420 calories).

Fact: It's true that vigorous exercise to good for the heart and lungs. To achieve and maintain a satisfactory level of fitness, you must exercise long and vigorously enough to raise body temperature, increase the heart rate, and induce heavy breathing and perspiration. But that is not the whole story. An additional benefit for all who exercise vigorously is the caloric expenditure that goes on immediately afterward. For as long six hours following a 28-minute run, for example, the average person burns up to twice as many calories as he does normally. After a two hour walk, the double calorie burning extends for only about two hours.

Fallacy: Exercise will only distract the overweight person from the main task: sticking to a diet.

Fact: While many people do lose weight without exercising. It's hard to imagine that they would have failed if they had exercised. In fact, after the initial few sessions, one is likely to feel both limber and virtous for sticking with exercise, and both those feelings are likely to add to, rather than diminish, commitment to a diet.