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Fitness & Exercise for Senior Citizens
Sit-Ups and Sundaes Don’t Mix: Diet with Exercise
Works Best
 24 studies find effective weight-loss
needs
exercise and diet
By Taunya English, Science Writer, Health Behavior
News Service
October 27, 2006 - If you’re overweight and hoping
to shed pounds, but still regularly indulging in french fries — don’t
count on exercise to salvage your weight-loss efforts. To truly slim
down, obese and overweight people need to watch what they eat and get
moving, according to a new analysis of weight-loss trials dating back to
1985.
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Senior Citizen Fitness & Exercise |
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“Exercise by itself is not going to be an effective
weight-loss strategy for an individual, you really need to combine
exercise with better nutrition,” said lead study author Dr. Kelly Shaw.
Shaw is a public health physician with the
Department of Health and Human Services in Tasmania, Australia. She was
surprised by the amount of weight loss achievable through diet alone,
compared to exercise. “I thought that exercise would result in greater
weight loss than it did as a stand-alone intervention,” she said.
“If you are a reductionist and came to me and said,
‘Look I want to lose weight and I’m prepared to diet or exercise, but
not both, what should I do?’ My response would be, you need to look at
your nutritional intake because there’s a bigger bang for your buck from
modifying nutrition than there is with physical activity,” Shaw said.
The review of 43 trials appears in the current
issue of The Cochrane Library, a publication of The Cochrane
Collaboration, an international organization that evaluates research in
all aspects of health care. Systematic reviews draw evidence-based
conclusions about medical practice after considering both the content
and quality of existing trials on a topic.
“The literature is pretty clear that, in the short
run, diet is way more important than activity for weight loss,” said
John Jakicic, a health researcher who was not involved in the Cochrane
review. “One candy bar can completely wipe out a bout of exercise,”
Jakicic said.
“Within six months, with diet alone we can get
about a 9 or 10 kilogram weight loss, which is over 20 pounds, versus
with activity we get about a 2 kilogram weight loss in that same period
of time,” said Jakicic, chair of the department of Health and Physical
Activity at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education.
But don’t discount the benefits of exercise. “Diet
is very important to get weight off. But exercise seems to be one of
those key factors for keeping the weight off when you lose it,” Jakicic
said.
“From a population level, I think that means that
our good nutrition programs and our healthy physical activity programs
really have to be very well-integrated,” Shaw said.
But Jakicic said that integration is rare in the
United States where gym-based programs often focus on exercise, while
programs like Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig focus mainly on food.
“Those folks who only focus on diet and don’t worry
about the activity are really short-changing themselves,” Jakicic said.
The Cochrane review uncovered independent benefits
from exercise that boost heart health and lower the risks for
cardiovascular disease. “If your main goal is health and well-being,
then exercise offers you significant improvements in your blood
pressure, lipids and your blood sugar,” Shaw said.
“The meta-analysis tells us what the individual
needs to do to improve body weight, to improve cardiovascular disease
risk,” Shaw said. The challenge now, she added, is for policy-makers and
governments “to look at ways that we can encourage behaviors in our
population that encourage people to get exercise back into their lives,
and to eat a diet that is less energy-dense and more nutritionally
sound.”
Shaw points to other successful public health
campaigns — like the tobacco control effort — and believes communities
can take a similar socio-environmental approach in the “eat right, get
moving” campaign.
Shaw said past public health campaigns prove that
legislative and legal levers work to change behavior. Other possible
strategies include fiscal incentives, perhaps subsidies for fresh fruit
and vegetables, or even smart urban planning that eschews fast-food
restaurants and builds in walking trails and green spaces, she said.
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