Bodybuilding is efficient exercise for weight loss – 04/25/2023 – Equilibrium

Lifting weights a few times a week can help us avoid obesity, according to an interesting study on resistance exercise and body fat. The work shows that people who engage in muscle-building exercise of any kind on a regular basis are 20% to 30% less likely to become obese over time than people who don’t, regardless of whether or not they also do aerobic exercise. .

The findings indicate that strength training may be more important for weight management than many realized, and that a little heavy lifting today can keep us lighter in the future.

Unfortunately, once we’ve gained those extra pounds, few of us will lose them in the long run. Most people who shed more than 5% of their body weight regain it within five years.

Therefore, the most effective way to combat obesity is prevention. And regular exercise can help here. Many studies show that people who walk, run, bike, swim or do other types of aerobic exercise tend to gain less weight as they age and are less likely to become obese.

But until today much less was known about whether weight training also influences body weight gain. Some past research indicates that resistance training helps people conserve muscle mass as they try to lose weight. But it wasn’t clear whether it could also limit long-term weight gain and prevent obesity.

So, for the study, published in PLOS Medicine, researchers at Iowa State University and other institutions set out to examine the relationship between weight training and obesity. To begin with, they turned to the large and useful database compiled for the Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study, a celebrated project that tracked the medical, health, and fitness status of tens of thousands of patients who came to the Cooper Clinic in Dallas. , between 1987 and 2005. These men and women had undergone extensive examinations in repeated visits to the clinic over the years.

Now the Iowa researchers have examined the files of nearly 12,000 of the participants, most of them in middle age. When they entered the Aerobics Center study, none of them were obese, based on their BMI. (BMI, or body mass index, estimates body fat indirectly, based on a person’s weight and height.)

These men and women had completed the usual range of health and fitness measurements on their clinic visits and completed an exercise questionnaire that asked, among other things, about strength training. He questioned whether they practiced bodybuilding exercises, and, if so, how often and for how many minutes per week.

The researchers then began collating the data, comparing each person’s weight and other measurements between one visit and the next. Based on BMI, 7% of men and women became obese within about six years of their first visit to the clinic.

But BMI is an inaccurate approximation of body composition and is not always an accurate measure of obesity. So the researchers also checked changes in people’s waist circumference and their percentage of body fat to determine whether they had become obese. By the criterion of a waist circumference greater than 100 cm for men and 90 cm for women, or a body fat index greater than 25% for men and 30% for women, up to 19% of participants developed obesity over the course of of years.

But the practice of lifting weights altered these results, the researchers found, greatly reducing someone’s risk of becoming obese by any criteria. Men and women who reported doing muscle-strengthening exercises a few times a week for a weekly total of one to two hours were 20% less likely to become obese over time, based on their BMI, and 30% less likely based on on your waist circumference or body fat percentage.

The benefits held when the researchers controlled for age, sex, smoking, general health and aerobic exercise. People who did aerobic exercise and also lifted weights were much less likely to become obese. But the same was true for those who did almost exclusively weight training and little or no aerobic exercise.

For Angelique Brellenthin, professor of kinesiology at Iowa State and director of the study, the results suggest that it is possible to benefit a lot from even just a little weight training.

Of course, the study was observational and does not prove that resistance training prevents weight gain, only that there is a link between the two. The study also did not take into account the participants’ diet, genetic factors or health habits, all of which can affect the risk of obesity.

More importantly, perhaps, it doesn’t tell us how muscle building influences weight, although resistance training is likely to build and maintain muscle mass, says Brellenthin. Muscle tissue, which is metabolically active, burns calories and slightly raises the metabolic rate. Interestingly, the desirable effect of increasing muscle mass may also help explain why fewer bodybuilders avoided obesity when the criterion used for measurement was BMI. BMI does not differentiate muscle mass from fat, highlights Brellenthin. If you gain muscle mass by weight training, your BMI may increase.

Even so, the main takeaway from the study is that a little weight training is likely to help with weight management over time.

“So my recommendation would be that you do some strength training exercises before or after your usual daily walk,” suggests Brellenthin. Or join a gym or take an online class.

Translated by Clara Allain