Uh oh, here comes another study that will surely add confusion to how exactly one should go about losing weight: exercise won't make you slim.
Researchers from Loyola University Health System and other centers compared African American women in metropolitan Chicago with women in rural Nigeria. On average, the Chicago women weighed 184 pounds and the Nigerian women weighed 127 pounds.
Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active. To their surprise, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity.
"Decreased physical activity may not be the primary driver of the obesity epidemic," said Loyola nutritionist Amy Luke, a member of the study team. [...]
Diet is a more likely explanation than physical activity expenditure for why Chicago women weigh more than Nigerian women, Luke said. She noted the Nigerian diet is high in fiber and carbohydrates and low in fat and animal protein. By contrast, the Chicago diet is 40 percent to 45 percent fat and high in processed foods.
Managing your weight is about 2 things: a better diet and exercise. It's simple, but unfortunately there are many people who refuse to accept it. Thus fad diets, fat pills and the 'discovery' of a fat gene (please).
And now some muppet says exercising doesn't have an effect on your weight.
The obesity 'epidemic'??? Like that's something you catch? I'm sure it has nothing to do with sitting on the couch all day watching ESPN and eating pizza.
Rant over
I know you like to write misleading headlines to bring in traffic, but this is the worst one yet.
People should not try to achieve slimness, but fitness... because it's impossible for some people to achieve "slimness" if they're not built that way. And fitness can only be acheived by excersize and healthy food... most importantly, exercize.
Anyway, interesting study. It just goes to show that the more a food is processed, the less good it is for you.
There, I said it.
Also, this sentence makes no sense:
"Researchers had expected to find that the slimmer Nigerian women would be more physically active. To their surprise, they found no significant difference between the two groups in the amount of calories burned during physical activity."
But I've found (I have many relatives that have tried fad diets, and I used to be obese) that best results for maintaining a healthy weight is really simple, eat when you get hungry, but only enough to curb your hunger, you'll find that your caloric intake will be drastically diminished, your food bills will go down, and your clothes will get loose. My parents and I lost a total of 430lbs and have kept it off for 5 years thanks to this method.
There seems to be no mention on body fat ratio or on the general appearance of the participants. It is a well known fact that muscles are much heavier than fat and a person weighing 56kg may be much leaner than one weighing 54kg (assuming they have the same height). hence weight as an indicator is not very accurate. that being said, one might exercise regularly and become slimmer but lose no weight as the fat lost is replaced by muscle mass.
STOP EATING SO MUCH, YOU FAT OAF!