A study conducted by Donnelly et al. (2003) titled “Effects of a 16-Month Randomized Controlled Exercise Trial on Body Weight and Composition in Young, Overweight Men and Women” compared weight loss for men and women after a 16 month intervention.

The intervention consisted of an exercise group burning 2000 kcal/week by way of steady state physical activity (around 65% of their VO2max, moderate intensity) for 16 months. To give you an idea, 2000kcal/week is around 30-40 min of jogging 5x per week. The control groups did not exercise.

The results were interesting. The 16 week exercise intervention showed men losing a significant amount of weight compared to control. However, women did not lose weight! It did help with weight management but for working as hard as they did, they did not lose weight. To account for this, they believed there is some hormonal influence when comparing to males. Regulating hormones adjust to the work requirement and maintain body weight instead of losing weight.

STOP spending HOURS on cardio WITHOUT the results you want. Learn how to properly lose weight through:

  • proper dietary intervention
  • safe and effective ways to increase lean body mass and to increase metabolism
  • disrupting homeostasis through interval training

Contact Ben our Certified Kinesiologist and Registered Exercise Physiologist for more information to get you on your way to your goals today!