If you don’t want to gain weight, walk 7116 steps every day!

Most obese people want to find a quick way to lose weight, just like Qin Shi Huang looking for the elixir of immortality... Xu Fu never came back, and it was never found!

The root cause of obesity is not just eating too much, but also the amount of activity. This is also the root cause of the high failure rate of dieting. A study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at the relationship between energy intake and activity level.

The study recruited 421 adults with an average age of 27.6 years to participate. The study obtained data on participants' energy intake, energy expenditure, physical activity, and diet-related behaviors every three months for a period of one year. After obtaining the data, the researchers divided the participants into five groups based on their gender and activity levels, from low to high.

Initially, participants' weight and activity level had an inverse relationship, with heavier people being less active and lighter people being more active. The least active group (6,062 steps per day, on average) weighed the most (86.3 kg, on average); while the most active group (10,260 steps per day, on average) weighed the least (67.5 kg, on average).

In addition, energy intake is positively correlated with activity levels, but this is an exception in the lowest activity group. Compared with those with the highest activity levels, those with the lowest activity levels are more likely to have eating binges and find it difficult to resist the temptation of delicious food. One year into the study, the lowest activity group had gained the most fat (an average of 1.7 kg). The probability of fat gain greater than 3% was 1.8 to 3.8 times higher in the lowest activity group than in the moderate activity group.

The results of the study support that low physical activity is a risk factor for fat gain. In addition, the study also found that the threshold for activity to achieve energy balance is 7,116 steps per day.

Key Summary

1. People with the worst activity levels are the ones who eat the most, crave delicious food, and are prone to losing control because of their cravings.

2. Except for the least active people, people with high activity levels usually have higher energy intake but do not gain weight.

3. Less activity leads to increased fat.

About this article

Source: Shook, RP, Hand, GA, Drenowatz, C., Hebert, JR, Paluch, AE, Blundell, JE, et al. (2015). Low levels of physical activity are associated with dysregulation of energy intake and fat mass gain over 1 year. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 102(6), 1332-1338.

This article is from Nutrition

Nutrition