PLAY MORE, EAT MORE - and WEIGH LESS
The choice is ours -
the active, robust-eating, healthy way, or a life on the sofa, nibbling celery
The 1984 Olympic Games summoned a worldwide television audience to witness remarkable feats by enthusiastic and predominantly slim people. Vast quantities of food were consumed by the athletes in the dining rooms. And Carlos Lopes won the men's marathon, at the age of 37.
The viewer might conclude that slimness and zest for life have more to do with an active life-style than with restricted eating; and that these benefits are not confined to 20-year-olds. Yet many among us have a "weight problem," the cause of which seems obvious. We simply eat too much. But scientific evidence offers little to support this idea. Instead, research findings support what the television viewer observes: Slim people as a group are more active than fat people.
Measurement of calorie intake in slim, active populations compared to moderately overweight, inactive groups routinely shows striking differences. A study with my colleagues at Stanford University found that among slim tennis-playing women (11 hours per week), average calorie intake was 2417, while among sedentary, moderately overweight women of the same age, it was 1490. Here were slim women remaining slim on 62 percent more calories than overweight women. The critical difference: physical activity.
In another Stanford study, 48 sedentary men aged 30 to 55 started on a one-year jogging program. We found that after the one-year training period:
The more the men ran, the greater their loss of body fat.
The more they ran, the more they ate.
Thus, the more they ran the more they increased their food intake and the greater their loss of body fat!
I believe that this illustrates the slow evolution of moderately overweight people to relatively slim individuals via a progressive program of regular exercise. The crucial ingredient is regular, enjoyable exercise.
Use of energy (calories) by the body falls into two categories. The first is energy used for essential bodily functions - digestion, heart beat, breathing - and is known as the basal metabolic rate, or BMR. In an average-sized adult BMR requires about 1400 calories per day.
The second category used for energy need for physical activity - standing, walking, running and all other activities. Together with the BMR, it makes up total calorie use, which should be balanced by food intake for weight to remain stable.
An inactive person might add only 300 calories a day to his BMR, for an average total of only 1700. But a marathon runner might add 2300, for a total of 3700. We can see from this that the sedentary person has a BMR-dominated total calorie expenditure, so that anything he does to increase his BMR will help burn fat, whereas anything he does to decrease his BMR will compound his
overweight problem.
For years now, we have known that dieting - especially severe dieting (such as 400 calorie-per-day diets) - decreases BMR. This is a body defense mechanism to conserve energy when food supply is reduced. But, unfortunately, it tends to undermine the effects of severe dieting by enabling the body to "get by" on fewer calories.
For this reason, I believe that severe dieting should be used sparingly, and all dieting should be seen as a temporary measure to help lose weight, not as a lifelong approach to weight control.
One concept that has emerged in recent years has been the apparent effect of vigorous exercise in temporarily increasing BMR. A jogger returning from an eight-kilometre run may have a higher BMR. While this effect probably lasts only a few hours, the jogger who runs every day maintains an increased BMR.
On the other hand, the sedentary, overweight person who diets severely without exercise decreases his BMR; does not increase calorie expenditure; has rapid initial weight loss that soon becomes disappointly slow; and does not enjoy the experience. By adopting a moderate diet and a slowly progressive exercise program, the same person could increase his BMR and calorie expenditure; achieve a moderate rate of weight loss that does not slacken off after a few weeks and even enjoy the experience.
In addition to facilitating weight loss and continued weight control, a regular exercise program has other health features. While weight loss by dieting alone results in some loss of muscle as well as fat, weight loss by exercise and moderate dieting leads to an increased proportion of muscle mass. The regular exerciser has good heart function. He is physically fit and can perform better than the unfit dieter when it comes to hiking, furniture moving or making love.
A regular exercise regimen may also help to prevent coronary heart disease and heart attacks. Exercise also slows mineral loss from bones (thus helping prevent osteoporosis and fractures, especially in older women), and improves one's mental outlook.
The benefits of eating more because of an increase in physical activity are not widely appreciated. Many people have remarkably low calorie intake. Often their intake is so low (1200-1800 calories a day) that nutritionists worry that vitamin and mineral deficiences can occur from a poor diet. And too little food, with inadequate fiber content, leads in the older sedentary population to chronic constipation.
Increased exercise leads to increased food intake and so to increased intake of other critical nutrients. So robust eating is no sin. It is the way we were designed to function, the complement to an active lifestyle.
Overweight remains an enormous public health problem, but severe dieting is not a way to solve it. Moderate dieting combined with an exercise program is much more effective and enjoyable. Eventually, the overweight person becomes a slim person - more active, fitter, enjoying reduced risk of chronic disease and earlier death, and often able to eat substantially more than when fat and sedentary.
The choice is ours; the active, robust-eating, healthy way - or a life on the sofa, nibbling celery.
Source: condensed from Executive Health Report - Peter Wood.
Does anyone see the need to supplement the diet with vitamin/minerals here? Can you imagine telling anyone, especially women, that they should be eating more than 1800 calories and be slim!!! Altho they have been talking about overweight and how to overcome it and what to do, no one seems to be paying any attention! This was published in May 1985, and the population is much, much more overweight now! In fact, 40 million!
