30 Minutes Hard Exercise as Good as One Hour of Exercise for Losing Weight and Bodyfat
- Written by Jeff Behar
- Sunday, 28 October 2012 00:00
30 minutes of exercise hard enough to produce a sweat is just as good as one hour of exercise when it comes to weight loss according to a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology.
Researchers concluded that 30 minutes of daily training was as “equally effective” at shedding the pounds as 60 minutes worth of sweating and was enough to turn the tide on an unhealthy body mass index".
The University of Copenhagen study concluded that sweating for half the time was “enough to turn the tide” for obesity.
The research found those who ran, rowed, or cycled for 30 minutes a day lost an average 8 pounds over a three month period. In comparison, men who pushed their daily training routine out for an hour lost two pounds less.
Mads Rosenkilde, who led the study, said: “Training is fantastic for your physical and mental health. The problem is that it takes time.”
In their study researchers followed the progress of 60 Danish men, considered “heavy but healthy” but who wanted to get fit and in “better shape” over three months.
Half of the men were asked to exercise for an hour a day, wearing a heart-rate monitor and calorie counter, while the second group only had to sweat it out for 30 minutes.
His team concluded that just “30 minutes of exercise hard enough to produce a sweat was enough to turn the tide on an unhealthy body mass index”.
“The participants in our study trained every day for three months,” said Mr Rosenkilde, a PhD student from the department of biomedical sciences.
“All training sessions were planned to produce a light sweat, but participants were expected to increase the intensity and give it gas three times a week.
“Participants exercising 30 minutes per day burned more calories than they should relative to the training program we set for them.”
Rosenkilde added: “In fact we can see that exercising for a whole hour instead of a half does not provide any additional loss in either body weight or fat.
“The men who exercised the most lost too little relative to the energy they burned by running, biking or rowing.”
But Rosenkilde admitted he was unsure why the men who exercised longer did not lose more weight.
Rosenkilde said that it may be that they ended up eating more or those who exercised during the 30-minute sessions could have trained for slightly longer because they still had energy left at the end of the session.
Rosenkilde now wants to study the benefits of combining exercise with daily commuting. He added: “If we can get people to exercise along the way to work, for example, we will have won half the battle.”
Experts estimate that obesity, in general, results in an additional $190 billion a year in U.S. healthcare costs – or one-fifth of all healthcare spending.
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