Discouraging, not

July 18th, 2008 at 03:26pm Mike DeDoncker

My wife, who was a better runner than I probably ever will be, passed along an article given to her by a friend the other day.

She had one comment about it. “Discouraging,” she said.

The article, which has the word “Health” printed in italics in its lower right-hand corner, says that, if despite trying to stay trim by running and climbing stairs, you suspect that you’ve beenĀ gaining weight around the midsection over the years, you’re right.

In a study of 7,000 lifetime runners, men who ran at a steady level between the ages of 20 and 50 gained an average of 3.3 pounds and three-fourth of an inch at the waist each decade.

“The only way to keep that weight off,” the article said, “is to continually up the exercise. A man who ran 10 miles a week at age 20 would have to run 52 miles a week at age 50 to fit the jeans he bought in college.”

Sure, metabolism is going to slow down with age, and that could lead to weight gain if a person doesn’t change their workout or their nutrition habits. But a theory that the only way to keep weight off is more and more exercise completely overlooks the possibility that a person with a well thought out eating plan couldn’t adjust their calorie intake to take metabolism and, maybe, a decreased activity level into account.

Further, if increased exercise is the choice, it wouldn’t all have to be aerobic exercise, such as running. Strength training routines can burn a ton of calories and a person’s metabolism tends to stay elevated for a longer period of time after a hard strength training workout as opposed to a hard aerobic workout.

Entry Filed under: personal fitness, healthyrockford.com