Is Exercise Still Important to Weight Loss?
“Exercise isn’t really important for weight loss” has become a popular sentiment in the weight loss community. “It’s all about diet,” many say. “Don’t worry about exercise so much.”
This idea crept out amid infinite theories about dieting and weight loss, and it quickly gained popularity, with one article alone citing 60 studies to support and spread this notion like wildfire.
The truth is that you absolutely can – and should – exercise your way to weight loss. So why is anyone saying otherwise?
For 10 years, I have been studying the epidemic of failed weight loss attempts and researching the phenomenon of hundreds of millions of people embarking on weight loss attempts – then quitting. In the meantime, exercise remains the most common practiceamong nationally tracked persons who are able to maintain weight loss over time. In fact, 90 percent of people who lose significant weight and keep it off exercise at least one hour a day, on average.
Excerpted from The Conversation
