Does Exercise Help You Lose Weight?

Filed in archive Exercise on October 25, 2007

If you follow the exercise and diet craze, then you know, recent claims were made that exercising doesn't help you drop those unwanted pounds. Do you suffer from this problem? If so, I found a great article on MSNBC that should help put your mind at ease.

Q: I am trying so hard to lose weight. I exercise daily - one hour on the treadmill or elliptical - yet nothing is budging on my body. I am totally frustrated. Why isn't exercise helping me to lose weight? Is it even worth it?

A: Don't give up on exercise for weight loss, says exercise physiologist Gerald Endress, fitness director of the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center in Durham, N.C., which caters to overweight clients.

"Every day I see people come into our center and they definitely lose weight," he says. "There are two factors that are key: restricting their diet and promoting exercise."

You don't discuss your diet, but keep in mind that "you will always be able to out-eat your workout," says Endress. "You've got to reduce your calorie intake."

Case in point: An average-weight person will burn about 100 calories walking a mile. So it will take a lot of steps to burn off a 300-calorie candy bar or 600-calorie plate of pasta.

Endress and other fitness and weight-loss experts say people tend to overestimate how many calories they burn through exercise and therefore the extent to which physical activity can help them lose weight.

"While exercise burns calories, the amount of exercise it takes to be a substantial contributor to a weight-loss program is quite a bit," says Warren Franke, an associate professor of kinesiology and director of the Iowa Sate University Exercise Clinic in Ames.

In the National Weight Control Registry, an ongoing study of 5,000 people who have lost weight and kept it off, most say they exercise about an hour a day, so you're on track there.