Your Choice For Active Release, Sports Injury, and Chiropractic Care

Schedule an Appointment, Call : 856-228-3100

Locations : Laurel Springs, Haddonfield, Mt Laurel, Somers Point, and Washington Township, NJ

CNN Article – Here’s why you exercise so much and still can’t lose weight

We see a lot of runners in our office, as in A LOT OF RUNNERS, and we very proud of that niche!  We are the ones that occasionally have to tell them to stop running for a bit (which is always great fun… … …).  This article resurfaces every so often and is very important read for runners.  The article touches on the fact that often times even if you ramp up your mileage in training, you won’t necessarily loose more weight due to running.

Please note all credit for this article is given to Carina Storrs, a CNN.com author.  The full link to her article is below.

Some key points from the article state:  

The study is in step with a growing body of research suggesting that burning a bunch of calories is a less realistic weight loss strategy than we might have thought, or hoped. “We can’t push the calories out [value] around too much,” Pontzer said. “Our bodies work very hard to keep it the same.”

It might be time to shift that standard public health message: To lose weight, simply exercise more. “We would say that ‘If you want to lose weight, you probably ought to focus on changing your diet and watching how much you eat.’ Exercise can help and it’s really important [for health in general], but they are two different tools,” Pontzer said.

The challenge of trying to lose weight just by exercising more is no secret to some clinicians. “This study actually explains a phenomenon that I see quite commonly,” said Dr. Holly F. Lofton, director of the Medical Weight Management Program at NYU Langone Medical Center.

“I see patients training for a marathon and they ask me, ‘Why am I not losing weight?’ ” even though they are exercising more and eating the same number of calories, Lofton said.

“If you run all the time, try biking or swimming, and if you bike, try running or swimming, because using different muscles can increase your energy expenditure again,” Lofton said. “It may also be possible to decrease and then increase your activity again and get an increase [in calorie burning],” she said.

And if you think you can necessarily rely on your Fitbit or other device to tell you how many calories you burned, think again: We probably burn proportionally fewer calories as we exercise above a certain level of intensity.

I highly feel that you should read the entire article on CNN.com at the following link:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/28/health/weight-loss-exercise-plateau/?iid=ob_homepage_NewsAndBuzz_pool&iref=obnetwork

The overall point of this article is just this, if you are runner who is putting in a reasonable amount of miles weekly and still struggling with weight loss or injuries from too much running, you need to re-evaluate your plan from the top down.  Runners can almost always benefit from swimming, hiking, cycling, strength training, core stability and a HEALTHIER DIET.  There I said it, it had to be said and I said it.  As a runner myself, I once thought that running a good deal (usually around 25 miles per week or more depending on the training cycle) would allow me to eat and drink whatever I wanted.  Simply put, after many years of struggling with my diet, chiropractic somewhat put me on the track to greatly improving my diet as well as figuring out how to make meals healthier.  If you need help with running injuries, diet recommendations, and some cross training recommendations, give our office a call, 856-228-3100.