High levels of leisure-time physical activity were associated with a lower risk of 13 types of cancer when compared to people with low levels of leisure-time physical activity according to a study done by researchers at the U.S. National Cancer Institute.

The 13 cancers associated with a lower risk were:

• 10% lower risk of breast cancer
• 13% lower risk of bladder cancer
• 13% lower risk of rectal cancer
• 15% lower risk of head and neck cancer
• 16% lower risk of colon cancer
• 17% lower risk of multiple myeloma
• 20% lower risk of myeloid leukemia
• 21% lower risk of endometrial cancer
• 22% lower risk of gastric cardia
• 23% lower risk of kidney cancer
• 26% lower risk of lung cancer
• 27% lower risk of liver cancer
• 42% lower risk of esophageal cancer

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Men who walked 30- 60 minutes per day (3-7 hours per week) had an 11% lower risk of stroke over the next 11 years compared to men who walked 0-30 minutes a day (0-3 hours per week) according to a new study.

“Time spent walking was associated with reduced risk of onset of stroke in dose-response fashion, independent of walking pace,” the authors of the study concluded. “Walking could form an important part of stroke-prevention strategies in older people.”

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Men who walked 1-2 hours per day (8-14 hours per week) had a 37% lower risk of stroke over the next 11 years compared to men who walked 0-30 minutes a day (0-3 hours per week) according to a new study.

“Time spent walking was associated with reduced risk of onset of stroke in dose-response fashion, independent of walking pace,” the authors of the study concluded. “Walking could form an important part of stroke-prevention strategies in older people.”

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Men who walked 3 hours or more per day (22 hours per week) had a 64% lower risk of stroke during an 11 year follow-up than men who walked 0-25 minutes per day (0-3 hours per week) according to a study from the United Kingdom.

“Time spent walking was associated with reduced risk of onset of stroke in dose-response fashion, independent of walking pace,” the authors of the study concluded. “Walking could form an important part of stroke-prevention strategies in older people.”

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Ex-smokers who exercise were 30% less likely to have died over some number of years compared to ex-smokers who do not exercise according to an analysis of self-reported exercise and smoking in 106,341 adults in the Health Survey for England and the Scottish Health Survey.

The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease was 29% lower in ex-smokers who exercised versus those who do not.

The risk of dying from cancer was 34% lower in ex-smokers who exercised versus those who do not.

Similar results were found in smokers who exercised versus smokers who do not.

The risk of dying over some number of years was 31% lower in smokers who exercise versus smokers who do not.

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People who engage in vigorous recreational physical activity—exercise which made them breathe harder or puff or pant—are 84% less likely to suffer cardiovascular disease (CVD) and are 88% less likely to die from coronary heart disease over the next 15 years compared to people who engage in a low amount of recreational physical activity—exercise which did not cause them to breathe harder—according to a recent study from Australia.

After adjusting for the Framingham Risk Score (measures of blood pressure, cholesterol, etc) and central obesity (belly fat), people who engage in vigorous recreational physical activity were 65% less likely to have died from cardiovascular disease than people with a low level of activity.

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People who entered an exercise-only program to help them lose weight lost an average of only 3.5 lbs after one year according to a new study from Sweden.

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Women assigned to diet-plus-exercise lost an average of 10.8% after one year, losing an average of 19.6 lbs, dropping from roughly 181 lbs down to 162 lbs according to a recent study from the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Women assigned to diet-only lost an average of 8.5% after one year, losing an average of 15.6 lbs, dropping from roughly 185 lbs down to 169 lbs according to a recent study from the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Women assigned to exercise-only lost an average of 2.4% after one year, losing an average of 4.4 lbs, dropping from roughly 184 lbs down to 180 lbs according to a recent study from the US. Read the entire article | Email this article

Women assigned to a control group in which no changes to diet or exercise were suggested lost an average of 0.8% after one year, losing an average of 1.5 lbs, dropping from roughly 185 lbs down to 184 lbs according to a recent study from the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Women assigned to diet-plus-exercise, who exercised less than 22 minutes per day, 7 days per week (less than 154 minutes per week) lost an average of 9.6% after one year, losing an average of 17.6 lbs, dropping from roughly 183 lbs down to 165 lbs according to a recent study from the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Women assigned to diet-plus-exercise, who exercised 22 to 28 minutes per day, 7 days per week (154 to 196 minutes per week) lost an average of 12.7% after one year, losing an average of 23.1 lbs, dropping from roughly 182 lbs down to 159 lbs according to a recent study from the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Women assigned to diet-plus-exercise, who exercised 28 minutes per day or more, 7 days per week (196 minutes per week or more) lost an average of 12.9% after one year, losing an average of 23.1 lbs, dropping from roughly 180 lbs down to 157 lbs according to a recent study from the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

"[E]xtreme exercise causes heart failure and other injuries, quite the opposite of preventing them," writes Joel M. Kauffman, PhD, the author of Malignant Medical Myths: Why Medical Treatment Causes 200,000 Deaths in the USA each Year, and How to Protect Yourself. Read the entire article | Email this article

The belief that we can eat less without it affecting our energy levels, or exercise more without it affecting our appetite, is wrong notes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.

"The very notion that expending more energy than we take in -- eating less and exercising more -- can cure us of our weight problem, make us permanently leaner and lighter, is based on yet another assumption about the laws of thermodynamics that happens to be incorrect," Taubes writes. Read the entire article | Email this article

"If we restrict the amount of food an animal can eat..., not only does it get hungry, but it actually expends less energy. Its metabolic rate slows down. Its cells burn less energy (because they have less energy to burn). And when it gets a chance to eat as much as it wants, it gains the weight right back," Gary Taubes writes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.

"The same is true for humans."

"Eventually, our bodies compensate."

Therefore, as Taubes points out, the advice we have been given by health experts, that losing weight is simply a matter of diet and exercise, ignores this fact, and can only lead to temporary weight loss. Read the entire article | Email this article

"If we replace five pounds of fat with five pounds of muscle, which is a significant achievement for most adults, we will increase our energy expenditure by two dozen calories a day. Once again, we're talking about the caloric equivalent of a quarter-slice of bread, with no guarantee that we won't be two-dozen-calories-a-day hungrier because of this," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.

This is in relationship to the idea that weight lifting rather than aerobic activity like running will cause weight loss because weight lifting will increase muscle that will burn more calories, however, as Taubes points out above, the effect of this is tiny. Read the entire article | Email this article

"Two experts in the Handbook of Obesity, for instance, reported as a reason to exercise that the Danish attempt to turn sedentary subjects into marathon runners had resulted in a loss of five pounds of body fat in male subjects; they neglected to mention, however, that it had zero influence on the women in the trial, which could be taken as a strong incentive not to exercise," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.

This is in relationship to the idea that you can lose weight simply by by exercising which will burn more calories without appetite increasing as well to compensate for the extra calories burned. Read the entire article | Email this article

"Physicians, researchers, exercise physiologists, even personal trainers at the gym took to thinking about hunger as though it were something that existed only in the brain, a question of will power (whatever that is), not the natural consequence of a body's effort to get back the energy it has expended," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It.

This is in relationship to the idea that you can lose weight simply by by exercising which will burn more calories without appetite increasing as well to compensate for the extra calories burned. Read the entire article | Email this article

"The dubious credit for why we came to believe otherwise goes almost exclusively to one man, Jean Mayer, who began his professional career at Harvard in 1950, proceeded to become the most influential nutritionist in the United States, and then, for sixteen years, served as president of Tufts University (where there is now a Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging)," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It. Read the entire article | Email this article

""'Vigorous muscle exercise usually results in immediate demand for a large meal," noted Hugo Rony of Northwestern University in 1940," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It. Read the entire article | Email this article

"Until the 196os, most clinicians who treated obese patients dismissed as naive the notion that we could lose weight through exercise or gain it by being sedentary," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It. Read the entire article | Email this article

"As it turns out, very little evidence exists to support the belief that the number of calorieswe expend has any effect on how fat we are," writes Gary Taubes in his excellent book Why We Get Fat and What To Do About It. Read the entire article | Email this article

The one-fifth of people engaging in the most physical activity versus the one-fifth engaging in the least was associated with a weight loss of 1.8 pounds over 4 years according to a study by Harvard researchers. Read the entire article | Email this article

Each additional hour of exercise reduced the risk of become obese by 6 percent during a 6-year follow-up according to study from researchers at the the University of Turin in Turin, Italy. Read the entire article | Email this article

A small group of people (26 people) from the National Weight Control Registry who had successfully lost weight and kept it off engaged in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity for an average of 42 minutes of per day compared to 19 minutes for an overweight control group (30 people) that were weighed as much as the weight loss group did before they lost weight. Read the entire article | Email this article

"Data from the scientific community indicate that a 15-[week] diet or diet plus exercise program produces a weight loss of about [22 lbs] with a 60-80% maintenance after 1 [year]," according to a 1999 review paper on the effectiveness of diet and exercise for weight loss.

"Although long-term follow-up data are meager, the data that do exist suggest almost complete relapse after 3-5 [years]."
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Thirty-two percent (32%) of overweight or obese men in the US pursued diet and exercise to lose weight compared to 60% of men who pursued just diet or exercise, but not both, according to the 2003 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey involving 16,720 non-pregnant adults in the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of overweight or obese women in the US pursued diet and exercise to lose weight compared to 74% of women who pursued just diet or exercise, but not both, according to the 2003 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey involving 16,720 non-pregnant adults in the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Overweight or obese people in the U.S. who had been told they were overweight by their doctor were more likely to exercise to try and lose weight than those who had not been told by their doctor -- 44% of those told by their doctor started exercising to lose weight versus 34% who had not been told they were overweight by their doctor.

This according to the 2003 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey involving 16,720 non-pregnant adults in the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Overweight or obese people in the U.S. who had been told they were overweight by their doctor were more likely to both diet and exercise than those who had not been told by their doctor -- 41% of those told by their doctor started to both diet and exercise to lose weight versus 30% who had not been told they were overweight by their doctor.

This according to the 2003 to 2008 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey involving 16,720 non-pregnant adults in the U.S. Read the entire article | Email this article

Working out on a treadmill was found to burn 40 percent more calories than a stationary bike according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Read the entire article | Email this article

The more vigorous a woman exercises, the lower her body mass index (BMI), the lower her percent body fat, and the lower her waist-to-hip ratio according to a study from Kansas State University. Read the entire article | Email this article

Exercise alone causes only modest weight loss concludes a recent review. Average weight loss was only 2 to 4 pounds greater in the exercise groups than the no treatment control groups in six of ten randomized studies that were analyzed. Read the entire article | Email this article

Most exercise studies that have measured food intake have found that exercise does not increase appetite.

Nineteen ( 19 ) percent of exercise studies that have measured food intake have found an increase in appetite, 64 percent found no effect and 16 percent found a reduction in appetite according to recent review paper.
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"Maintenance of fat loss is extremely difficult... even with relatively intensive training," concluded the authors of a recent study. Read the entire article | Email this article

There is compelling evidence that formerly obese individuals require 60 to 90 minutes of moderate intensity activity to prevent weight regain according to a recent paper published in the Obesity Reviews. Read the entire article | Email this article

People who, a year earlier, had lost 10 percent of their body weight, were 1.8 times as likely to have regained at least 5 percent if they were sedentary according to an analysis of 1310 people from the 1999-2002 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) done in the U.S who a year earlier had lost at least 10 percent of their maximum body weight.
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Women who lost and maintained at least a 10 percent weight loss after two years exercised an average of 48 minutes per day and reduced their calorie intake to an average of 1365 calories per day according to a study from researchers at University of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA.

Women who gained weight exercised an average of 18 minutes per day and ate an average of 1809 calories per day.

Women who lost up to 4.9 percent of their body weight exercised an average of 28 minutes per day and reduced their calorie intake to 1638 calories per day.

Women who lost 5 to 9.9 percent of their body weight exercised an average of 26 minutes per day and reduced their calorie intake to 1452 calories per day. Read the entire article | Email this article