A recent study brings good news to those who have limited time to exercise. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark have shown that thirty minutes of daily exercise provides just as much benefit in terms of weight loss and body mass improvement as sixty minutes. The research has just been published in the American Journal of Physiology.
A research team at the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences followed 60 overweight men for a period of thirteen weeks. Half of the men exercised for an hour each day, while the second half exercised for thirty minutes daily. All of the training sessions were planned to produce a light sweat, but participants were expected to increase intensity three times per week. The participants wore a heart-rate monitor and calorie counter to collect data. The participants were followed closely by health science researchers with focus on energy balance, insulin resistance, and hormones in the blood.1
The result of the study showed the men who exercised for thirty minutes per day lost an average of almost eight pounds, whereas the men who exercised for an entire hour lost only an average of just less than six pounds. One additional benefit to those who exercised for thirty minutes was that they burned more calories than what is normally anticipated. The participants in this group portrayed more vigor and motivation than the group who exercised for an entire hour.2
Mads Rosenkilde, PhD student, Department of Biomedical Sciences concluded some of the explanation for the results is that thirty minutes of exercise seems more doable to participants. As a result, the participants had the desire and energy for more activity after their exercise session.3
As the results of this study indicate, exercising for an entire hour instead of thirty minutes per day does not provide any additional loss in body weight or body fat. Considering the fact that about forty percent of the male population in Denmark becomes obese (similar to that of many developed countries throughout the world), the results of this study are encouraging. Just thirty minutes of concentrated exercise can give equally good results on the scale, say Rosenkilde. In the busy world we live in, exercising thirty minutes per day is much more doable than an hour, and could be as simple as walking to and from work in some cases.
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