Does Exercise Increase Metabolism?
I’ve always thought so, and my belief was, at least, partially correct. However this study is one of those I didn’t enjoy reading because it indicates that one of my long-held beliefs about exercise may be wrong. To keep my ego in tact, I want to point out that many, if not most, fitness and health experts have suffered under the same mistaken belief.
Here’s what I’m talking about. We’ve all been told that one of the benefits of working out is that it raises your body’s metabolism and that you keep burning calories at an increased rate for up to 24 hours following a workout.
Would that it were true! Unfortunately, at least one new study indicates that we are going to have to put that belief in the “myths about exercise” category.
In a report, published in the Journal Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews, Edward Melanson, an exercise physiologist and associate professor of medicine at the University of Colorado in Denver and some colleagues discuss research to date on the issue of burning fat during and after exercise. The authors conducted a study of 65 exercisers of various ages using different levels of exercise, and non-exercise.
Sadly, the authors of the study conclude that while people do burn more fat when they are exercising than when they are not, they have no greater ability to burn fat over the next 24 hours than on days when they are couch potatoes.
Dang! Tell me it isn’t true.
