How to Make Jogging Work for Weight Loss?

Have you placed cardiovascular type exercises as the center piece of your weight losing efforts? Cardiovascular type exercises refer to walking, jogging, running, elliptical machine, stationary bike. You will be surprised to find out that while cardiovascular exercises can do wonders for your health and initial weight loss, it actually does very little for long-term weight loss.

A study in The International Journal of Obesity further reinforced this fact. Interestingly, the researchers found that men and women who logged the same weekly mileage week after week, regardless of the amount, actually gained weight over time.

In the end, the researchers concluded that to avoid weight gain, male runners needed to increase their weekly mileage by 1.7 miles/week annually. Women however were more unfortunate with having to increase weekly mileage by 2.4 miles per week/annually.

The study seems to show that jogging is ineffective for long-term weight loss, but is this really so? If we look at the results, one thing is for sure, that without consistently increasing the distance run, there would not be any weight loss. This does not come as any surprise as this simply means that intensity has to be increased over time. The challenge with jogging is that people usually settle into a lull. Also , with steady state cardiovascular exercises, it becomes very difficult to measure intensity.

The body adapts in strange ways when you continuously impose a consistent cardiovascular strain on the body like a jog/walk/run. It’s your in-built survival mechanism kicking in to protect you from perishing. Your body makes certain leg muscles more efficient where these muscles need less and less energy to do the same work. So if today, a run would induce the muscles to burn 10g of fat, the body adapts the muscle to less say burn 9g of fat for the same run after a given time.

Have you ever seen the poor pot-bellied man who is consistently in the park every morning clocking his 5 km run and yet after a year does not look any different. Without continuous increase in effort and intensity, its impossible to get further results. This is a law of the universe which simply means that the only thing constant is change. Even the intensity of one’s cardiovascular work outs must be changing and not remaining constant.

So how can we make jogging work for weight loss? The method is a systematic way to exert, measure and increase intensity. The answer is interval training and weight resistance exercises.

Interval training for any cardiovascular exercise is done as follows;

• The work cycle – Walk/run at the highest possible intensity for a given amount of time. This could vary between 30 seconds for beginners to 2 minutes for very fit athletes. The work cycle would normally get the wind out of you
• The rest cycle – Walk/run at a very slow pace. The ratio of the work cycle to the rest cycle can be from 1:2 (the unfit) to 1:1 (fit individuals) to 2:1 (very fit individuals)
• The time taken for the work cycle can be anywhere from 30 secs (the unfit individual) to 2 minutes (a very fit individual)
• Increasing intensity of exercise can be very much more easily attained on a treadmill. Here one can gradually increase the incline and running speed of the work cycle and strive to continue improving.

The only challenge with interval training is that it is not for the beginner. Beginners are advised to start with steady state jogging or even walking and build up stamina gradually. It could be 6 months to a year before a beginner is ready for intervals. A beginner who has not done any form of exercise would benefit tremendously from just steady state cardiovascular exercises. At this point, any exercise would give weight loss. An olympic sprinter trains more with intervals and a marathoner does more steady state cardiovascular exercises. See the typical bodies of such sportsmen in the picture on the right. Which would you prefer?

Weight resistance training can also give you tremendous results. An obese or overweight person would put tremendous repeated strain on their joints by jogging. It may be wiser to reduce weight before embarking on jogging or running. Resistance training nicely fits into the equation here by reducing risk of joint wear and tear as well as risk of other injuries.

Imagine how many hours a 70 km run would take if you decide to pursue what the study prescribed! If you are a jogger, what are your views on this?

Most people do not have the information and do not know where to turn to for useful knowledge on how to lose weight.  Correct Weight Loss is losing fat while maintaining your lean body mass. Correct Weight Loss comes solely from the loss of body fat. While this article, centered around exercise, one must not forget the golden rule of weight loss which is a calorie deficit. As such correct and healthy nutrition plays a huge role in this as well and this would be a topic for another discussion.

In summary, steady state cardiovascular exercises while excellent for improving health benefits, and providing initial weight loss is not as effective for long-term weight loss. Here is another article that may interest you on the same subject entitled “Why Steady State Jogging is A Losing Battle for Weight Loss“.