Health & Medicine - Posted by Rachel Bloch Harrison-Duke on Monday, December 17, 2012 14:09 - 8 Comments 
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(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...To shed fat, aerobic workouts beat weights
"Given that approximately two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight due to excess body fat, we want to offer clear, evidence-based exercise recommendations that will truly help people lose weight and body fat," says Leslie H. Willis, an exercise physiologist at Duke Medicine. (Credit: "walking on sidewalk" via Shutterstock)
DUKE (US) — Aerobic training is the best mode of exercise for burning fat, say scientists who compared it to resistance training and a combination of the two.
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The study, which appears in the Journal of Applied Physiology, is the largest randomized trial to analyze changes in body composition from the three modes of exercise in overweight or obese adults without diabetes.
Aerobic exercise—including walking, running, and swimming—has been proven to be an effective way to lose weight. However, recent guidelines have suggested that resistance training, which includes weight lifting to build and maintain muscle mass, may also help with weight loss by increasing a person’s resting metabolic rate.
Research has demonstrated health benefits for resistance training, such as improving glucose control, but studies on the effects of resistance training on fat mass have been inconclusive.
“Given that approximately two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight due to excess body fat, we want to offer clear, evidence-based exercise recommendations that will truly help people lose weight and body fat,” says Leslie H. Willis, an exercise physiologist at Duke Medicine and the study’s lead author.
Researchers enrolled 234 overweight or obese adults in the study. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three exercise training groups: resistance training (three days per week of weight lifting, three sets per day, 8-12 repetitions per set), aerobic training (approximately 12 miles per week), or aerobic plus resistance training (three days a week, three set per day, 8-12 repetitions per set for resistance training, plus approximately 12 miles per week of aerobic exercise).
The exercise sessions were supervised in order to accurately measure adherence among participants. Data from 119 people who completed the study and had complete body composition data were analyzed to determine the effectiveness of each exercise regimen.
The groups assigned to aerobic training and aerobic plus resistance training lost more weight than those who did just resistance training. The resistance training group actually gained weight due to an increase in lean body mass.
Aerobic exercise was also a more efficient method of exercise for losing body fat. The aerobic exercise group spent an average of 133 minutes a week training and lost weight, while the resistance training group spent approximately 180 minutes exercising a week without shedding pounds.
The combination exercise group, while requiring double the time commitment, provided a mixed result. The regimen helped participants lose weight and fat mass, but did not significantly reduce body mass nor fat mass over aerobic training alone. This group did notice the largest decrease in waist circumference, which may be attributed to the amount of time that participants spent exercising.
Resting metabolic rate, which determines how many calories are burned while at rest, was not directly measured in this study. While theories suggest that resistance training can improve resting metabolic rates and therefore aid in weight loss, in this study, resistance training did not significantly decrease fat mass nor body weight irrespective of any change in resting metabolic rate that might have occurred.
“No one type of exercise will be best for every health benefit,” Willis adds. “However, it might be time to reconsider the conventional wisdom that resistance training alone can induce changes in body mass or fat mass due to an increase in metabolism, as our study found no change.”
The researchers add that exercise recommendations are age-specific. For older adults experiencing muscle atrophy, studies have found resistance training to be beneficial. However, younger, healthy adults or those looking to lose weight would see better results doing aerobic training.
“Balancing time commitments against health benefits, our study suggests that aerobic exercise is the best option for reducing fat mass and body mass,” says Cris A. Slentz, a Duke exercise physiologist and study co-author. “It’s not that resistance training isn’t good for you; it’s just not very good at burning fat.”
Additional researchers from Duke and East Caroline University contributed to the study, which was funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health.
Source: Duke University
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8 Comments
Frank
Danny Hoardern
But Frank if you told them, you would not have had this opportunity to vent :)
Great to have this sort of news floating about, hopefully the media run with it to help some people that have no knowledge of exercise.
Wonder how these two studies fit in with all this:
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2011/08/24/aje.kwr200.abstract
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9383640/Cannabis-could-be-used-to-treat-obesity-related-diseases.html
Olivia Green
I’ve never been a huge fan of these “lose weight quickly” type articles. The problem with most of the methods is that, most people end up putting the weight straight back on.
If you want to lose weight permanently, then visit: http://healthandfitnessdiets.com. Thanks to the great diet plans and workout routines, I’m currently in the best shape of my life and look great. Furthermore, the weight is staying off!
However, remember there are no shortcuts or magical secrets to a great body – it’s simply a result of hard-work and not giving up!
The bigger question is: If you can create a calorie deficit with diet alone, what are the added fat-loss benefits to creating the same calorie deficit through cardio?
This is largely debated everywhere with articles pointing in both directions.
Wow, superb blog structure! How long have you ever been blogging for? you made running a blog glance easy. The entire glance of your website is wonderful, as smartly as the content material!
Robo
Don’t you just love how every time a “weight loss” item appears the spammers do too…. ;)
Seriously though, who’d have thought it, more cardio exercise leads to greater weight loss…..kinda like water is wet!
FREE weight loss plan from Robo (No spam included and would suggest you don’t eat the stuff either)
1) ALWAYS eat breakfast – include RESISTANT STARCH in your diet!!!
2) Modify existing diet, reducing quantity of food consumed, best done over a little time, so as not to be to difficult to SUSTAIN modified diet – particularly reduce the overall level of high fat “bad boy” type snacks. BUT, also maintain some level of treats in your diet, so as to help with SUSTAINABILITY.
3) Get a SUSTAINABLE exercise plan going, ie, a daily purposeful walk.
4) Do more eating earlier in day, avoid large nighttime meals and sinful late night snacking!
5) Drink water
6) Remember food is simply energy – so more energy in – make sure more energy goes out (movement)!
I’ve lost ten pounds since I started my new year’s resolution. I started rowing. What a blast and I get a mix of a weight lifting workout with an aerobic effect all in one…
Hello.This article was really fascinating, especially because I was browsing for thoughts on this issue last week….. i really enjoy your blog
Gee, who’d a thought that exercise with constant motion and respiration would burn more calories than stationary muscle flexing?
Yes they did an in depth study and considered variables, but I could have told you the best way to burn fat is to go and do cardio and saved you a bunch of money.