Will Cardiovascular Exercise Help You Lose Weight?

                                                                                                                
Fitness experts tell us the only way we can get in shape is to run several miles, or spend an hour on a stair climbing machine, or maybe a nice, long session on a ski simulator or a rowing machine. But is cardiovascular exercise really a good way to lose weight?
Dr. Arthur Siegel, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard University and chief of internal medicine at MacLean Hospital in Massachusetts, has conducted more than 25 studies on runners in the Boston Marathon.
One of his studies focused on 60 runners tested before and after the 2004 and 2005 Boston Marathons. Every runner was given an electrocardiogram (EKG) to make sure they did not suffer heart problems. Dr. Siegel and his colleagues also ran blood tests for troponin, a protein that indicates injury to heart tissue.
Before the marathons, all 41 men and 19 women in the study had normal heart function. Twenty minutes after the marathon, however, 40 per cent of the runners had troponin levels high enough to indicate destruction of heart tissue. The runners had not had heart attacks, but they still had heart damage. Moreover, most of them had abnormal heart rhythms.
If running a marathon is a good for you as having a heart attack, what does that tell you about cardiovascular exercise in general?
Exercise machine increases your lung capacity, but Endurance exercise routines treat your body like a machine, but your body is not a machine. Forced exercise makes your lungs and heart shrink their capacity so they can operate more efficiently-depriving you of the very reserve capacity you need if you have lung injury or heart attack.
That's the exact opposite of exercise that builds up your health. What you really want is to build up reserve capacity so your heart and lungs can continue to serve you even if parts of them are damaged.
And to do that, you need to do short bursts of intense exercise punctuated by longer periods of rest. Running on empty, literally, won't help you lose weight. It will just hurt your heart.
What does all this have to do with weight loss? Well, the sad secret of working out hard to lose weight is that most people do change their physiques so they look better, most people who do exercise feel better, but they still gain weight. They lose some fat and gain more muscle.
Exercise just is not a way to lose weight. Calorie-restriction is. And if you really want to improve your health, not just win a marathon, the exercise you get needs to be intense with rest periods for recovery and rebuilding. Easy does it helps you get into better fit with fewer pounds.