United States – Vigorous endurance workouts make body adiposity fall, even without a concurrent loss of body mass, according to a recent small study.
Endurance Workouts Reduce Body Fat
Eleven middle-aged men who covered 710 miles cycling in seven days, including consumption of food and fluids, only dropped 1% of their total body weight, as reported by HealthDay.
But they lost over 9% of their overall body fat, including a nearly 15 percent decrease in levels of hazardous visceral fat that accumulates around the organs.
Health Improvements Observed in Cyclists
Cyclists also had a Total cholesterol level drop of more than 20% Triglyceride levels that were reduced by almost 40%) and a significant decrease in blood pressure.
The results “support the importance of promoting a physically active lifestyle rather than caloric restriction in obesity prevention,” concluded the research team led by co-senior author Jean-Pierre Despres, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Laval in France.
In other words, the new study “suggests that humans are created to move rather than to starve themselves as much as possible,” the authors noted.
Study Details and Participant Profile
In the study, the authors identified 11 recreational male cyclists with the ages between 50 and 66 who were able to consistently cycle at an average speed of over 19mph. All the men were from the Quebec City metropolitan area, which is located in the Quebec province of Canada.
The cyclists were sent once or twice during the seven consecutive days on a 64-mile road loop on the south shore of the St Lawrence River opposite Quebec City, riding a total of 710 miles.
The men were advised to eat to their full capacity regarding their body weight and were fed to their satisfaction: buffet breakfast and lunch, a dinner box to take home, and several snacks.
Cyclists, prior to their cycling sessions, had a comparable amount of visceral fat to that of a group of men in the same age bracket of a sedentary nature. However, the cyclists had a much lower amount of liver fat and abdominal fat, as reported by HealthDay.
Comparative Fat Analysis
This was, on average, during the course of the one-week ride; it revealed that it appeared that men got a little more than one percent of lean muscle mass while they shed more than nine percent of body fat.
“These findings once again emphasize the need to go beyond weight loss to fully evaluate changes in body composition induced by … endurance exercise,” the researchers concluded.