Let me be honest here, I’m not a big fan of exercise. I get pressure and squats every day, and even though I enjoy brisk walks, I never, ever, like to run.
The main reason I stick to it is because of the overwhelming evidence of the multiple benefits that exercise brings. In fact, recent research suggests that it may be even more beneficial than was suspected for preserving a clear memory.
But for those who spend a lot of time running with treadmills or pedaling with the exercise bike in hopes of burning a lot of calories, bad news arrives.
Because a new study shows that exercise is even less effective in helping people lose weight than we previously thought were true.
We have known for a long time that exercising alone is not a great way to lose weight. This is mainly because people overestimate how many calories they burn when they exercise (up to three or four times, according to at least one study).
Let me be honest here, I’m not a big fan of exercise. I get pressure and squats every day, and even though I enjoy brisk walks, I never, ever, like to run
And they underestimate the amount of calories in the snack they are rewarded with after running.
In fact, the calories burned by exercise are surprisingly modest.
A few years ago, I had my calorie burn measured accurately as I ran a mile. This was done with a mask connected to a device that measured the amount of oxygen it consumed and the amount of carbon dioxide it breathed.
The test showed that I burn about 120 calories per mile when running and about 60 calories per mile when walking.
Which means if you ate a cupcake (about 400 calories) to burn them, you would have to run just over three miles or walk six miles, which would take about two hours. But it turns out that these calorie-consuming figures are desperately optimistic.
The findings of the new study show that, over time, your body compensates for the extra calories you burned during exercise, slowing your metabolism.
Yes, down, without speeding it up. This is exactly the opposite of what we were led to believe.
They underestimate the amount of calories in the snack they are rewarded with after running. In fact, the calories burned by exercise are surprisingly modest
It has always been assumed that if you exercise more, your metabolism will speed up. While this seems to be true in the short term, it will not be so in the long term. The new study, from the University of Roehampton, examined data that had been collected by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Scientists there had carefully tracked the amount of calories more than 1,750 volunteers burned while doing their normal lives. What the Roehampton team found was that while people consume more calories when they exercise, their bodies simply compensate by burning fewer calories than normal when they do things like sleep.
It turned out that the calories used to keep the body rigid (known as basal energy expenditure) fell by 28% during periods when they exercised regularly.
Which, in turn, means the overall impact on the waist exercising is less than we might have expected.
A few years ago, I had my calorie burn measured accurately as I ran a mile. This was done with a mask connected to a device that measured the amount of oxygen it consumed and the amount of carbon dioxide it breathed.
There was especially bad news for people hoping to exercise to lose weight, because the effect is even greater in overweight or obese people.
This latest study found that if you have a higher body mass index (body mass index), only half of the calories you burn while exercising translate into a real loss of calories at the end of the day.
In other words, if you’re overweight, far from burning 120 calories every time you run a mile, once you include the impact your race has on lowering your metabolic rate, you only really burn through 60 calories.
Depressing, yes, but no excuse to hang up your running shoes.
There is a lot of research that shows that staying active will add healthy years to your life, reduce your risk of developing various chronic illnesses, help you sleep better, improve your mood, and even encourage you. your sex life.
Being active is also good for the brain.
A recent study by scientists at the National Institute on Aging, published in the journal NeuroImage, showed that regular exercise leads to the creation of new brain cells, especially in the area of the brain associated with memory. , which hopefully means you are less likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.
So keep exercising, but don’t expect this to only make much of a difference when you get on the scales.
As I get older, I look more and more like my father. He was a charming man, but unhealthy, and sometimes I worry about having inherited some of his most frightening genes.
Thus, I was relieved to see that a recent study concluded that while the genes we inherit have a significant impact on the risk of a wide range of diseases, from heart disease to type 2 diabetes and cancer, its influence diminishes as we age.
For this study, researchers at Oxford University used genetic data from more than 500,000 Britons and looked to see what impact their genes had on the chances of getting sick.
They found that the impact of many genes, especially those related to conditions such as high blood pressure, skin cancer, and inactive thyroid, faded over time.
Why exactly this happens and why it affects some diseases more than others is still a mystery.
But I hope this means that my current healthy lifestyle will come out first.
The real risk of eating that hot dog
My attention was recently caught by a headline that stated, “Eating a hot dog can take 36 minutes to live.”
This came from a study from the University of Michigan, USA, where they determined the impact on our health of eating a serving of more than 5,800 foods.
One of the examples they cited was hotdogs, which they said took 36 minutes to life expectancy. But as a good thing, eating a handful of nuts could add 26 minutes.
But how do you get to those numbers? I delved into other research, which generally agreed that eating a portion of processed meat daily is associated with a 15% higher risk of “all-cause mortality.” In other words, the risk of dying over the next year is 15% higher if you eat processed meat regularly than if you don’t.
If you do smart calculations, this will translate into about 36 minutes that will shave your life for every hot dog you eat.
What you can decide or not is a good reason to leave hot dogs alone.
I don’t know the accuracy of these figures, but I like the approach to trying to make the relative risk of eating different foods a little clearer.
Sir David Spiegelhalter, a Cambridge University statistician, has advanced the idea with something he calls “microlives”. This involves estimating how much you will add or remove a certain activity from your life.
Based on studies, he calculated that smoking two cigarettes, drinking two alcoholic beverages, eating a portion of processed meat, being 5kg overweight, or watching two hours of television a day will make you fall about 30 minutes into your life.
But taking a statin can add 30 minutes, while doing 20 minutes of moderate exercise daily will add an hour. Even better, getting five days a day can add two hours.
What I deduce from this is that if you go on a good diet and stay active, consuming some weird hot dog is unlikely to greatly mark your life expectancy.