WAISTS SHRINK AS SCALE STAYS THE SAME
Study: Exercise helps, even without weight loss
Harvard Health Letter

Most of us think we need to lose some weight, so we resolve to eat better and get more exercise. Often, though, that resolve vanishes before the pounds do.

But a study by Canadian researchers offers a new perspective.

Their small study included 24 middle-aged men who weren't in the habit of exercising. Eight were lean, eight obese, and eight others obese with type 2 diabetes. For three months, they followed a rigorous exercise program (an hour of aerobic exercise, five times a week).

The twist was that they were told to eat enough to compensate for the extra calories they were burning so they would not lose weight.

The researchers made several measurements at the end of three months, but two stood out. In all three groups, the waist size of the men shrank by about an inch, and levels of interleukin-6 (an inflammatory chemical produced by fat and certain other tissues) declined.

By John Barban
www.eatstopeat.com

A commonly held belief about food is that you need to eat frequent meals to keep your metabolism going and to keep burning calories. I’m not exactly sure where this idea came from but it makes absolutely no sense to me.

In fact, to me it sounds like this nonsense about eating food to keep your metabolism going is a clever myth that only supports the food and nutritional supplement industry. The latest fad in nutrition is eating 6 small meals per day instead of 3. That is 3 more meals the food industry can sell you products for! It won’t be long until you will be told to eat 9 small meals per day.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve read the research and there is a small increase in metabolism that happens whenever you eat. However, the little effect food does have on your metabolism cannot overcome the weight gain you would experience from eating too many calories overall.

If you apply this idea to the calories you are eating, then eating a 100 calories might make you burn an extra 15 calories, but you still have an another 85 extra calories that you haven’t burned off.

So does this mean eating at an all you can eat buffet is the best way to ‘rev up’ your metabolism and burn lots of calories? Not likely! That just sounds ridiculous.

Let’s look at this in a real life scenario to see how far off this logic is.