According to a recent study exercise not only helps reduce total fat, but actually shrinks the size of fat cells in certain regions of the body. The results from the North Carolina study were published in the International Journal of Obesity this August.
Most are aware that as we become more overweight we actually grow more fat cells than previously inhabited our body. But what many don't know is that those fat cells can grow in size, from small to very large, which affects the amount of space occupied by the fat cell. And on the flip side, once we grow or our body creates a new fat cell, that cell is here for life. We cannot lose fat cells. We only decrease the weight or size of that cell.
So weight loss can be two fold, total fat loss as well as fat cell shrinkage. But what many previous clinical trials have shown is that exercise or diet only cause a fat loss, but shrinking the cells is more difficult.
So researchers at Wake Forest University in North Carolina wanted to determine if diet, exercise, or both could affect the average size of a fat cell. They also wanted to see if different areas of the body were affected differenty.
Most doctors know that extra body weight, especially from fat tissue, has different health implications depending on where on the body it is located. Increased abdominal fat is the most detrimental for our health, with heart disease and diabetes risk increasing dramatically if we are of the "apple" shape, i.e. more weight around the middle. This is in contrast to the "pear" shape, when most of the weight gain is below the waist line (usually around the hips), which causes relatively no increased risk for chronic disease.
In the study 45 obese women were allocated to one of three groups. The first group restricted calories and followed a low fat diet, the second group followed the diet and added additional exercise of moderate walking three times a week, and the third group followed the same diet but added more intense walking three days a week.
The total study period was 20 weeks. After that period total body weight of each of the women were compared to pre-study baseline as well as total fat percentage. Study participants also submitted subcutaneous fat samples from various body regions before and after the study.
All three groups showed similar reductions in total weight and fat percentage lost after the 20 week period following the diet and exercise. The major difference was found in the size of fat cells from the abdominal region. In the women who combined diet and exercise fat cells in the abdominal region decreased in size by an average of eighteen percent. Diet alone did not produce these results. Fat cell size in the hip region did not show a similar change.
The results were positive for reducing body weight and redistributing fat, but also showed promise for reducing risk of heart disease and diabetes. The authors stress that a combination of diet and exercise is best for reducing weight, but more importantly for reducing risk of chronic disease.
Posted by Dr. Christina Gutierrez on September 11, 2006 04:14 PM
