Lack Of Exercise May Be One Cause Of Obesity

If you’re someone who deals with stress fairly often (who doesn’t?), here’s something you may not know: your body produces a hormone called cortisol in response to chronic stress which is associated with causing excess belly flab. The more cortisol you have, the more belly fat you typically gain.

Now get this: The New England Journal of Medicine published a study showing that individuals who consumed mini-meals spaced three hours apart each day actually decreased their cortisol levels by 17 percent compared to those who ate the same amount of food in only three meals per day.

And here’s some even better news…

This cortisol-blunting, the fat-burning effect, occurred in just 14 days. This means that after you change to the 5-meal-a-day plan you will see a difference in two weeks. The trick is to follow a healthy meal plan and divide those same calories into 5 meals instead of 3.

So if you want to take control of your body’s cortisol levels, one thing you can do is simply start eating a small mini-meal every three hours to reduce cortisol up to 17 percent on your own. That’s just one of quite a few benefits to eating five mini-meals a day, spaced three hours apart. (Example: Eat a meal at 7 am, 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm, and 7 pm).

Of course, there are many ways to lose weight, and this study of course doesn’t negate the power of intermittent fasting as recommended in our extremely effective One Day Diet. Intermittent fasting has a whole host of research and benefits of its own. It’s all about finding out what works best for you and your lifestyle.

Our government likes to fund lots of studies on the subject of “Obesity”.  But I don’t see any effort to educate young people on nutrition, proper eating habits, which foods they need to eat and why, and finally,  lack of exercise and the long-term problems it causes. This should be taught all through Grammar school and Middle school. I think you have to catch the student early on while they are still listening to the teacher. Something can be taught at age 6, but more advanced subjects like the “lack of exercise” should probably be taught in Middle School. I think the real idea is to have mandatory health classes all through the school years. If we keep young people thinking about their health, we’ll become a healthier and more productive population.

Lack of exercise — and not a tendency to eat too much — may explain why an increasing number of Americans are obese, a new study suggests. Personally, I think it’s a combination of both, overeating and lack of exercise but read on because this writer makes a good argument.

Researchers analyzed U.S. government data from the last 20 years and found that the number of women who reported no physical activity rose from about 19 percent in 1994 to nearly 52 percent in 2010. The number of men who said they didn’t exercise increased from about 11 percent to about 43 percent.

Black and Mexican-American women showed the greatest decreases in reported exercise, the study authors found.

During the study period, there was an increase in adults’ average body mass index (BMI), an estimate of body fat based on height and weight, with the most dramatic rise among women aged 18 to 39. The researchers also found increased rates of abdominal obesity, especially among women.

At the same time, calorie intake among adults remained steady during the study period, according to the findings reported recently in the American Journal of Medicine.

While the investigators found an association between inactivity and the obesity epidemic, the study did not prove a cause-and-effect relationship.

“Our findings do not support the popular notion that the increase of obesity in the United States can be attributed primarily to sustained increase over time in the average daily caloric intake of Americans,” lead investigator Dr. Uri Ladabaum, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, said in a journal news release.

“Although the overall trends in obesity in the United States are well appreciated and obesity prevalence may be stabilizing, our analyses highlight troublesome trends in younger adults, in women, and in abdominal obesity prevalence, as well as persistent racial/ethnic disparities,” Ladabaum added.

Pamela Powers Hannley, a journal managing editor, wrote in an accompanying commentary: “If we as a country truly want to take control of our health and our health care costs, [this study] should be our clarion call. From encouraging communities to provide safe places for physical activity to ensuring ample supply of healthy food to empowering Americans to take control of their health, we must launch a concerted comprehensive effort to control obesity.”

— Robert Preidt

Yes, I agree we need to control Obesity, but I differ in the way to do it. I do think that the population, in general, does need to exercise more, but as a society as a whole, we consume too much of the wrong kinds of food. Snack foods and sugary drinks are becoming a mainstay in the average person's diet. For most young people vegetables have become a four-letter word. And I don’t think most people under 40 know anything about nutrition. So, if this study can’t see that a poor diet combined with a lack of exercise is the problem, I think they missed the boat. After a comprehensive educational program is put in place and we live through a generation we’ll see a big difference.

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