Collective Wisdom: My Journey with Weight Loss: Low Intensity Exercise

Susan is a teacher who intentionally lost 30.6 pounds in about two months.  Her secret?  She enrolled in an international weight loss organization and engaged in regular exercise.  She will be writing about her experience for MedPie.com

I have tried to lose weight many times before by joining a large weight loss organization, but was not as successful as I was this time around. But I am still trying to pinpoint everything that happened here -- and I am hoping MedPie can help me figure it out.

While this organization claims to be research-based and follows healthy guidelines publicly known by many, they advise you to expect to lose no more than 1 to 3 pounds per week on their plan. Yet my average weekly weight loss was consistently higher than that, even though I was eating a lot of food. My two months of weight loss even included Thanksgiving week, which I celebrated – but during that week I still lost an astonishing four pounds. Consequently, I am really trying to understand what happened to me that week, and the other weeks, because my consistent above-average weight loss, on their plan, remains somewhat mysterious, even to me. I would like to know all the secrets of my success here.  Was it the type of food, the type of exercise, what?

Excerpts in the news of one study on low intensity excerise seemed to point to an answer: it was better than high intensity exercise for weight loss.  I just know that I focused solely on lowintensity exercise, for 30 minutes per day, each day, during the two months I lost weight. Specifically, I was walking on a treadmill, using a 3% elevation grade and a speed of about 2.5 miles per hour, or swimming laps at a slow to moderate pace for 30 minutes. On a few days I did both activities. But I never strived to increase my time, or to increase my speed, or to do anything remotely painful or tiring. I only wanted to be consistent, and to do the activity on a daily basis.

Frankly, I had hoped to lose maybe 8-10 pounds during those two months, and I would have been happy with such a weight loss. I would have been VERY happy with a 15 or 20 pound weight loss. But I was truly shocked and thrilled to discover I had lost over 30 pounds during this short time. And, again, I ate a lot of food each day. I was not in any way starving myself. (And, anyone who has actually been on a part of this organization knows they certainly tell you to eat, and to eat ALL your daily “points” allowance of food). I have concluded that low-intensity exercise – done consistently, and by that I mean daily – is the best type of exercise to burn fat. This dedication to consistent activity was certainly a new factor for me in my weight loss effort, because never before had I been active like that, in a gym or in a pool, each and every day.

Is it true? Is low-intensity is the best type of exercise for weight loss?

MedPie.com responds:

What made the difference for Susan's weight loss was not the calorie restriction, nor the exercise, but rather the combination of both.  Calorie restriction alone will cause a person to slow down their metabolism and conserve activity, while excercise alone will increase one's appetite and calorie consumption. 

There has been a sort of character assassination in the press recently about how excercise is not really all that important for health in general or for weight loss in particular.  I examined the health claims of one New York Times article "Does Exercise Really Keep us Healthy?" in a two part series: "The Benefits of Exercise, Part One: Exercise Really Is Good for Your Heart" and "The Benefits of Exercise, Part Two: Excercise Really Is Good for Your Heart."

Susan made reference to another recent New York Times article, which although unfortunately titled "Why Doesn't Exercise Lead to Weight Loss" at least contained nuanced health claims supported by published research.  Tucked in a paragraph about a study which showed, to the surprise of many people, that low intensity exercise does not appear to increase calorie use for the rest of the day for both athletes and non-athletes, was the statement: "It is well known physiologically that, while high-intensity exercise demands mostly carbohydrate calories (since carbohydrates can quickly reach the bloodstream and, from there, laboring muscles), low-intensity exercise prompts the body to burn at least some stored fat."  A study of subjects in an exercise laboratory pinpointed the maximum fat-burning at 54% of VO2 max, which for most people can be approximated outside of an exercise laboratory with a heart rate between 60 and 80% of maximum. 

These nuggets of apparent truth, along with Susan's description of her experience, was transformed in my mind into a challenge: to find any electronically published studies that addressed the inherent question: Do obese women who are assigned low intensity exercise plus diet compared to those who are assigned high intensity exercise plus diet experience greater weight loss?  By asking our question this way, we have identified the subjects (obese women), the intervention (low intensity exercise plus diet), the co-intervention or comparision (high intensity exercise plus diet), and the outcome of interest (weight loss). 

So, guess what?  No electronically available studies matching my question exist.  But several studies are near-fits, and provide information worth learning:

A large randomized controlled trial in JAMA by Andersen et al assigned one group of obese women a diet plus structured aerobic intervention, while the other group were assigned a diet plus lifestyle modification advice.  The lifestyle group was simply advised to increase moderate physical activity by 30 minutes a day.  There was a small increase in weight loss among those assigned to the aerobic exercise intervention, but this difference was not clinically or statistically significant.  The patients in the lifestyle group also kept more weight off for a longer time.

For a smaller randomized trial by Grediagin et al, researchers assigned one group of obese women high intensity exercise, and the other group low intensity exercise, with no diet intervention.  Weight loss was significantly higher for the low intensity group.  This difference was attributed to muscle formation (lean weight gain) in the high intensity group.

The key to the relative success of low intensity exercise is probably not related to its efficiency in fat burning, (because a calorie burned is a calorie burned), but rather related to the fact that it is sustainable.  Our author writes "But I never strived to increase my time, or to increase my speed, or to do anything remotely painful or tiring. I only wanted to be consistent, and to do the activity on a daily basis."  So she kept it up. And she saw dramatic results. 

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Susan
Posts: 1

Thank you!
Reply #1 on : Fri December 11, 2009, 14:21:51

---

Thank you so much for responding to my question about low intensity activity. I appreciate it.

Without sounding like a promotion for Weight Watchers, I just want to add that I know some people are able to lose weight on that program without exercising (so these members claim).

But while I have had varying degrees of success with WW in the past (sometimes not losing weight, because I was not actually doing the program), I do strongly believe the conclusion reached here by Med Pie: that the consistency of the activity can certainly impact weight loss efforts -- with dramatic results.

I happen to like WW very much, and they do include and encourage activity in their program.

I just never actually did BOTH their program AND this kind of consistent activity (emphasis on consistent).

Thanks again!

Last Edit: December 23, 2009, 17:09:31 by block  

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