So, How Much Do You Need To Workout? The Depressing New Weight Loss Study.

The Washington Post ran an article this week called “How Much Do You Need To Workout?”  It can be summed up with this excerpt:

“A big new study says women who are middle-aged or older need to spend about 60 minutes every day doing moderate exercise just to avoid gaining weight. That’s right: an hour every day.”  (emphasis added)

So, if you are a woman, the absolute bare minimum amount of exercise you have to get done in a week is 7 hours just to avoid gaining weight.

That’s kinda depressing.

My Take On This

There are a couple of very important points in this study that have been overlooked:

#1.  This ONLY mattered for thin women. “there was no relation among women with BMIs from 25 to les than 30 or 30 or higher.”

#2.  The assumption made by the researchers was that all exercise is the same – it’s just a means of burning calories.  So, the only stuff they asked about was “walking or hiking; jogging (> 10minute miles); running (<10 minute miles); bicycling, including stationary machines; aerobic exercise, aerobic dance…”

The only thing measured was random, low intensity exercise.

Take Home Points

Random, unscientific, low intensity exercise does nothing to help or even to maintain your weight unless you are already a thin women; and, even then, it may not.

Wow.  That was totally worth however many millions of dollars were spent on this study.

Seriously, the real take home point is that exercise that improves body composition is not done for the sake of burning calories, it’s done to impact your hormones, create a metabolic shift, and/or to accelerate your metabolism and to shift you to burn more fuel from fat for the 24-36hrs after you are done.  More on that right here.

Just burning calories is an exercise in futility unless you happen to have always been a thin person.  Exercise done for the sake of burning calories (aerobics) might actually impair your ability to burn fat for at least 24 hours after you do it.

You don’t need 7 hours of smart exercise per week to massively improve your body composition – 2 to 4 hours (including mobility and flexibility and core and conditioning work) will get the job done.

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Bonus Side Note – What If Aerobics Are Actually BAD For Your Heart?

Yeah.  Weird.  I just though endurance work was worthless for fat-loss and made you a poor athlete, but I never thought that it would actually damage your cardiovascular system.  It’s probably worse for heart and blood vessels than being completely sedentary.

I’ve come across some very interesting research recently that strongly suggests that lots of aerobic exercise – like marathon running – is VERY bad for your hear and circulatory system.

I covered that in the April print newsletter that went to the printers this week.  You’ll get that if you are on my mailing list, and you won’t if you aren’t.  If you want to get on it you can email Natillie (thebodyyouwant@yahoo.com) and tell her you want to receive my monthly newsletter (name and mailing address).

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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.