There’s more evidence showing that diet is even more important than exercise in maintaining a healthy weight. I covered a separate study regarding diet and exercise from last January asserting the same thing. That’s not to say exercise isn’t an integral part of your healthy lifestyle, it’s just that you can’t think you can eat what you want and just “work it off.”
The current obesity mess we’re in is almost entirely due to people’s dietary choices, not the lack of exercise. And that’s one whopper of a surprise.
“There is no evidence that a marked reduction in physical activity has been a contributor to this epidemic in the United States,” says the study’s leader Boyd Swinburn, a professor at the health faculty of Australia’s Deakin University.
Here’s the most interesting aspect of the study’s findings: the researchers found that American adults weighed less than was expected from their diet. That means, according to Swinburn, over the studied period of time, the adults may have been increasing their physical activity, not decreasing.
“If anything over that period of time, the adults had been increasing their physical activity, not decreasing,” said Swinburn.
Hold it right there. People are moving more than they once were? You lost me there.
“Getting everybody to walk an extra two hours a day is not really a feasible option for countering the epidemic,” says Swinburn. Eating less is.
To be clear, this isn’t discounting the importance of exercise to your health. It’s just saying that the mother load of responsibility for the obesity crisis falls on bad food choices. So don’t cancel your gym membership.
(via: Yahoo)