Bonners Ferry Local Guide including all of Boundary County Idaho

Diet, exercise take off equal pounds, study finds

Friday, January 26, 2007; CNN

Eating less and exercising more are equally good at helping take off the pounds, U.S. researchers said Friday in a study that challenges many of the popular tenets of the multibillion dollar diet and fitness industry. Tests on overweight people show that a calorie is just a calorie, whether lost by dieting or by running, they said. They found there is no way to selectively lose belly fat, for instance, or trim thighs. And their carefully controlled study added to evidence that adding muscle mass does not somehow boost metabolism and help dieters take off even more weight. "It's all about the calories," said Dr. Eric Ravussin of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, part of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. "So long as the energy deficit is the same, body weight, fat weight, and abdominal fat will all decrease in the same way." Ravussin said the study, published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, is one of the few done under controlled conditions that can actually demonstrate what happens to a human body while dieting and exercising. Ravussin's team has been testing volunteers for another reason -- to see whether taking in fewer calories helps people live longer. Strict diets have been shown to help animals from worms to dogs live longer, but it takes longer to study monkeys and humans. They tested 24 people, 12 who ate a calorie-restricted diet, and 12 who dieted and also exercised five times a week for six months. - Full Story