Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Exercise Trumps Diet for Weight Loss

Exercise Trumps Diet for Weight Loss: "April 14, 2006 -- Active monkeys stay lean, while couch-potato monkeys get fat -- no matter how much they eat.

The findings come from a research team led by Judy Cameron, PhD, senior scientist at Oregon National Primate Research Center and professor of behavioral neuroscience and obstetrics/gynecology at Oregon Health & Science University.

'Far and away the biggest predictor of weight gain was how active the monkeys were -- that overrode how much food they were eating,' Cameron tells WebMD.

The study may explain why people who try to lose weight by dieting alone rarely succeed.

'These findings were surprising to us as scientists,' Cameron says. 'We always assumed food intake was the main control of body weight and that dieting was the best way to control this. From these results, you are forced to think how active you are is more important than how much you eat.'

Cameron and colleagues report their findings in the early online edition of the American Journal of Physiology: Regulatory, Integrative and Comparative Physiology."

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