The Business Insider has some words of wisdom from Philip Stanforth, a professor of exercise science at the University of Texas and the executive director of the Fitness Institute of Texas:
Studies tend to show that in terms of weight loss, diet plays a much bigger role than exercise. But when you look at people who've lost weight and are also managing to keep it off, exercise is important.
There was a recent study on this in a large group of people who'd lost weight. And when you looked at the people who were able to keep it off, something like over 90% of those people exercised regularly.
There have been other studies where they've matched calorie deficit with exercise expenditure — [meaning you have one group of people cutting 500 calories from their daily diet, for example, and another group of people burning 500 calories at the gym every day] — you see pretty much the same type of changes.
But thinking practically, keep in mind you'd have to walk 35 miles to burn 3,500 calories. That's a lot of walking. But if you look at eating, a Snickers bar might have, say, 500 calories. It's going to be a lot easier to cut the Snickers bar than to do 5 miles of walking every day.
There's more:
Lots of people have lost weight. Fewer people have kept it off.
Again we've seen that 90% of people who keep it off — at least in that study I mentioned — exercise regularly. So it looks like it plays a bigger role there.
What all this research is showing, we think, is that there's something about exercising that helps with weight loss and keeping it off.
Just a reminder.
