Comm/155

Taylor Bender

COMM/155

April 27, 2013

Stephen Aardema

It is estimated that 68.8 percent of the United States adult population is either overweight or obese. This is an increase of 13.8 percent since 1998, when it was estimated that only 55 percent of American adults were considered overweight or obese. Of the 68.8 percent estimated to be in the overweight to obese category, 35.7 percent fall into the obese lot. The good news is that this epidemic in the United States is completely reversible. Based on several scientific studies, (Ross, R., Freeman, J. A., & Janssen, I. (2000). Karen E. Foster-Schubert, Catherine M. Alfano, Catherine R. Duggan, Liren Xiao, Kristin L. Campbell, Angela Kong, Carolyn E. Bain, Ching-Yun Wang, George L. Blackburn, Anne McTiernan. Obesity, 2011) dieting and exercise results in more weight loss and health benefits than either strategy alone.

In a study performed by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, individuals were randomly split into four separate groups: exercise only, diet only, exercise and diet, and no intervention at all. At the end of this study, the researchers discovered that individuals in the exercise only group, on average, lost about 2.4 percent of their beginning weight. The study group that only lowered their caloric intake (dieting) lost an average of 8.5 percent of their body weight. This is a good start in reaching a particular weight goal, but what were the outcomes of the individuals who partnered exercise with a lowered caloric intake? Those subjects ended up, at the end of the trial, losing an average of 10.8 percent of their starting body weight. This is a substantial difference between simply exercising alone and still slightly higher than dieting without exercising.

There are also many health benefits to exercise that are not measured by the digital scale sitting in America’s bathrooms. Even in exercise without any weight loss, individuals still decrease their risk for cardiovascular...