Movement
Pay less attention to weight! How fit you are is much more important
Running is the sport that burns calories most effectively. That is why the training is particularly popular with people who want to lose weight.
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Diets are still popular for losing weight. Although they are proven to rarely bring anything. It would be better to focus on the fitness factor. A new study shows the positive effect on health.
In recent years, obesity in the population of industrialized nations has risen steadily. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of overweight people worldwide has tripled since 1975. According to an analysis of the magazine “iScience” This has led to a strong focus on weight loss methods. Diets and Co. have become more and more popular over the years. If you enter the word Diet in a Google search, you will get 3,540,000,000 hits. But everyone will getting fatter. So where is the mistake? And what needs to change to prevent obesity from growing further?
Two questions that many scientists have been asking themselves for a long time. And the answers could be revolutionary. Because it could be that all previous approaches to the effect of weight reduction were simply wrong. For example, researchers at Arizona State University studied how weight loss compared to physical activity affects mortality risk. The surprising answer: Those who were fitter had a lower risk.
This could have interesting consequences, especially with regard to diets and the dreaded yo-yo effect. Losing weight and gaining it back is a cycle that many are familiar with. But it also has negative health consequences. There are studies that have shown in the past that weight gain and weight loss can have a negative impact on cardiovascular health. Even more so than the consequences of being overweight.
Fitness is much more important than weight
That’s why some experts are now recommending an approach that no longer includes weight and diet. This means that it is no longer necessary to lose weight, for example through a diet, in order to achieve health improvements. Instead, the focus would shift to physical fitness and exercise. With the side effect that the weight would also be reduced through the sport. The frustration of the yo-yo effect would also go away.
Improved blood sugar values, blood pressure reduction or more positive blood lipid values are well-known effects of physical activity – and can be achieved with relatively little effort. There are studies showing that just a brisk two-minute walk every hour improves blood sugar. In general, it can be said that everything that reduces the daily sitting time has a positive effect on health. Any gain in physical fitness is therefore more important than sheer weight loss.