Does Exercise Make a Difference?

Do you find it amusing to read all of these crazy studies they do, coming up with contradictory information at times? I sure do! I find it both sad and funny at the same time to watch everyone react and jump on this bandwagon or that one.

Here's a new study I was just reading about in yahoo news. Newsflash! Exercise doesn't make a difference in weight loss. Yippee for you if you don't like going to the gym, right?

With a headline declaring tidings such as these, I just had to read it.

I'm again no statistician, but they were studying rural women living in Nigeria, and urban women from the greater Chicago area, stating that both groups got equal amounts of exercise each week. No, really? Are you telling me that a woman living in RURAL Nigeria, possibly walking for miles for supplies, lugging water from wells, and so forth gets the same amount of physical activity as your typical McDonald's Munching urban Chicago resident who rides the L to work? Come on, people, apples to oranges.

Exercise, I have found from personal experience, makes all the difference in the world, but only if you are also eating right, obviously. You can't eat double cheeseburgers and expect that a few minutes at the gym is going to fix your waistline. :-) I hope that part is obvious.

I try to move myself a few times a day, for a grand total of nearly an hour a day each day in concentrated bursts, and if time is not a factor, I also try to do things the "hard way" whenever possible...running up and down the stairs with laundry, hanging out my laundry to dry, parking in the furthest parking space at the store, and so forth. I also usually do some light weight training but have put that on hiatus until I find out more about my shoulder surgery that I may be needing in a few weeks to months.

Don't let this study be your excuse to revert to sofa-spud-dom as long as you eat well. Admit it, you feel better when you move anyway, don't you?

Want to lose weight? Eat sensibly and move your body as much as you can in a day. Lose weight with me this year! By the end of the year, my goal is to have the word "obesity" stricken from my medical records, how about you? Let's do it!