Can I Save You 225 Minutes?

What do you think would happen if you added 225min of “target heart rate zone” cardio to your week? If you did 45min of jogging on 5 days per week, do you think that you’d lose some fat? Do you think your results would come in faster?

Nope.

It turns out that what will actually happen is NOTHING. You’d get the same results if you had watched American Idol, Desperate Housewives, and a couple of DVD’s.

I’ve reported on research like this before, but here is some more.

Researchers took obese women and divided them into 4 groups:

1. Exercise group (EX) – they did 45min of aerobics on 5 days per week.
2. Diet group (D) – they ate a reduced calorie diet (which only works because you end up eating fewer carbs FYI)
3. Diet + Exercise Group (EX + D) – the did the 5 days @ 45min per session of aerobics + ate the same diet as the D group
4. Control (C) – they didn’t do nothin’

At the end of 12 weeks there was “no significant change for EX relative to C.” In other words doing aerobic exercise is as effective as sitting on your ass… that is to say that it does nothing.

At the end of 12 weeks there was no significant difference between D and D + EX.  To quote the researchers: “Aerobic exercise training during a 12-week period has no discernible effects on body composition.”

Here’s the link to the free abstract, the full text costs however (I don’t get the money).

Well, That Study Wasn’t Long Enough!

Some people are thinking that the people in the above study just didn’t workout long enough.  The thought is, “what if we took the exercise that did not work before and make them do more of it and for more weeks, then it will work.”

Researchers in Seattle thought of this.  They took overweight people and had them do 60 minutes (fifteen more minutes baby!) of aerobic exercise for a whole dang year!

After 12 months of exercising for 6 hours per week here are the results:

• Men lost 3.96lbs on average
• Women lost 3.08lbs on average

With a big salad I can lose that much going to the bathroom.  (Some times I weight myself before and after just for fun.)

What’s funny is that the researchers said, “these data support the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Institute of Medicine guidelines of 60 min/d of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.”

REALLY!?!?!?!?  By the researchers numbers I’d need to 30 hours of aerobics per week if I wanted to drop 20 pounds this year.

Resistance training & interval training, however, DO work.  You can read more about that here and here.

Josef Brandenburg is 2010, Washington, DC  Personal Trainer of the Year Nominee for both Personal Fitness Professional Magazine and The Washington, DC Fitness Association, The DC Fitness Advisor and the Fitness Expert for the PCOS Challenge TV Show. He shows normal people with hectic lives and average genetics how to create the bodies they want in the time they actually have. To find out more about the 7-Day Free Trial click here. You can also pick up a FREE copy of his brand new CD – “Why Eat Less and Exercise More is The Worst Advice Ever” here.