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As most Americans know, losing that excess bodyfat for good will bring us a LONG list of benefits. Lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, decreased risk of some cancers, and so on. Besides just helping us look and feel better, achieving true fitness also prevents bone loss, improves memory, eases the symptoms of menopause, and more! In short, regular exercise and bodyfat reduction will all years to our lives by minimizing so many life-threatening conditions.

Now, thanks to new research from Britain, we can actually say how many years we might gain by losing that excess weight once and for all! Researcher Tim Spector of St. Thomas’ Hospital (U.K.) is part of the team that studied 1,100+ British women between 18 and 76 years of age.

“Telomeres cap the ends of chromosomes in cells and protect them from damage. However, each time a cell divides — and as people age — these caps get shorter, so decreases in telomere length have long been associated with the aging process.

Reporting June 14 in the early online edition of The Lancet, the British researchers found that telomeres of obese women…..were much shorter than those of lean women…… In contrast, lean women had much longer telomeres than moderately overweight women who, in turn, had longer telomeres than obese women.” (Source: HealthDay News)

The researchers found that obese women aged an additional 8.8 years more than lean women (based on telomere length). Wow, 8.8 years!

By the way, this study also focused on smoking and how that impacted aging in women. Perhaps surprisingly, this study found that women who do (or have) smoked aged an additional 4.6 years. What’s surprising about this finding is that obesity appears to cause more ‘aging damage’ than smoking, at least in some women.

There you have it, yet another reputable study proving that regular exercise can add years to our life (and life to our years!). The evidence is absolutely OVERWHELMING: maintaining a fit body through regular exercise will help us live longer!

Besides, we want to look good in a bathing suit this summer!

* Copyright 2005 Pick Up The Pace. Permission is not required for the distribution of Pick Up The Pace articles as long as they are used in their entirety, are properly credited to Pick Up The Pace, and are accompanied by our website link: www.letspickupthepace.com.

* The information in this article and on this site is for general reference purposes only and not intended to address specific medical conditions. This information is not a substitute for professional medical advice or a medical exam. Prior to participating in any exercise program or activity, you should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional. No information in this article or on www.letspickupthepace.com should be used to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

Tracie Johanson is the founder of Pick Up The Pace, a 30-minute exercise studio for women, focusing on fitness, health and nutrition for maximum weight loss. Please visit http://www.letspickupthepace.com for more information.

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Many of us have the same reasons for wanting to exercise and lose weight…..look better, feel better, lower blood pressure, lower cholesterol, decreased risk of some cancers, lower risk of heart disease, etc.

But did you know that making your waistline thinner will also make your wallet fatter?

It’s true! Losing weight will help you earn and save more money. “Studies have consistently shown that obese employees are paid less than normal-weight employees doing similar jobs” (Source: HealthNewsDigest.com - Palo Alto, CA)

A comprehensive study of wages in 1998 found that obese workers earn significantly less than than non-obese employees. How much less? About $3.41 per hour. This discrepancy was found only in those workers who had employer-sponsored health insurance, perhaps suggesting that the higher costs of insuring obese individuals was being passed on to the employees themselves. (Source: Bundorf and co-author Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at the Center for Health Policy/Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research).

So it’s possible that losing weight could eventually add substantially to your paycheck. But did you know that losing weight may also lower the amount of money you personally pay out in medical costs?

According to a study recently published in Health Affairs, obese Americans pay $732 more for health care each year than do normal-weight adults. So what would you do with an extra $732? Considering that $732 is more than double the annual cost of most gym memberships, it seems that joining a health club pays for itself.

We all have great reasons for wanting to lose that excess weight, and how we have two more: potentially higher wages and lower out-of-pocket medical expenses.

However, we do need to issue one word of warning…..when losing weight you may find that you need to spend some of that ’saved money’ on a new wardrobe. After all, you will have to buy some new ’skinny’ clothes!

Tracie Johanson is the founder of Pick Up The Pace, a 30-minute exercise studio for women focusing on fitness, health and nutrition for maximum weight loss. Please visit http://www.letspickupthepace.com/ for more information.

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In this series of articles we’re examining the TIMING of fitness. As we found last time, WHEN we eat is almost as important as WHAT we eat. In this article we’re going to take a look at WHEN we exercise, and how to get the maximum benefit from our workouts based on TIMING.

We’ve all heard the popular addage ‘Timing is everything’. As passe as cliches may be, we can’t argue with the accuracy of this phrase. It holds true in almost every aspect of our lives - business, relationships, family and even exercise.

WHEN we do our training may be just as important as how intensely and how long we do it. Many bodybuilders and fitness experts swear that the absolute BEST time to workout for fat loss is first thing in the morning before breakfast because it enhances the fat-burning process. Morning exercise not only appears to benefit fat utilization by the body, but it also may be advantageous for several other reasons.

+ TALKIN’ ABOUT FAT
Those who preach the superiority of morning exercise for fat-burning deserve a pat on the back by the scientific community. That’s right: The theory that cardiovascular exercise on an empty stomach first thing in the morning has the greatest potential for fat loss is firmly supported by science.

However, this effect is not necessarily due (as many believe) to the low concentrations of glucose in the blood and glycogen in the muscles when we wake up in the morning. In actuality, glucose and glycogen have little to do with this morning fat-burning effect. Henriette Pilegaard, PhD, a research scientist at the prestigious Copenhagen Muscle Research Center in Denmark, states: “Blood glucose and muscle glycogen levels stay fairly constant overnight. This fact is reported in several texts including the well-known Biological Rhythms in Clinical and Laboratory Medicine.”

While glucose and glycogen are tightly maintained, metabolism, on the other hand, takes a drastic swing during the night. Jaci VanHeest, PhD, professor of exercise science at the University of Connecticut (Storrs), explains: “During your nightly slumber, your muscles switch almost exclusively to fat use in order to spare glucose for the brain. At this time, insulin levels are very low and the hormone glucagon is very high.” This increases the amount of fat that leaves our fat cells and travels to our muscles, where the fat is ultimately oxidized (burned).

As several research studies show, we can take advantage of this fat-burning cycle by exercising first thing in the morning before eating. Increasing the energy needs of our muscles via aerobic exercise will enhance both the ‘leaking’ of fat from fat cells and the ’sponging up’ of fat by exercising muscles. Over time, this could lead to noticable bodyfat loss.

+ BURN, BABY, BURN
Several studies have also discovered that this increase in fat usage by muscle continues throughout the day, even while we’re just sitting around! When we eat breakfast after exercise, less fat from the meal ends up in fat cells and more is burned by muscle. This is a great way to nullify the fat content of a meal and keep it away from our love handles, but it won’t work if we eat a plate of bacon and eggs every day!!

The effect of greater post-meal fat-burning appears to be maintained even during later meals. In essence, we could say that morning exercise boosts our fat-burning potential for the entire day……and that makes for a great day!!

+ KICK START THE HEART
When we wake up in the morning, we’re typically at our ’slowest and lowest’. That means several of our body’s processes are still waking up, because our body follows a biological clock that cycles all bodily functions over a 24-hour period. Each function, such as adrenaline release, has a peak and a valley at some point during the day. When our alarm clock buzzes, our body temperature is at its lowest - as is the release of adrenaline, which is related to our slower metabolism and heart rate at this time.

Exercise first thing in the morning will get that adrenaline flowing and kick-starts our metabolism for the rest of the day. Research shows that if we get into a CONSISTENT morning exercise routine, we’ll actually shift the phases of our biological clock! Before we wake up, our temperature, adrenaline release and metabolism will start to take off to prepare our body to awaken and get ready for the workout to come.

+ THE BOTTOM LINE
To burn the most fat, then, the best time to exercise is first thing in the morning. Before breakfast is best. (Although there are some concerns about exercise without eating, but that’s a topic for another article.)

One caveat: THE ABSOLUTE BEST TIME FOR YOU PERSONALLY TO EXERCISE IS ANYTIME YOU CAN. Yes, we’ve been talking about morning exercise and there’s lots more research we could discuss about two-a-days and evening exercise and…..etc. BUT THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR FOR FAT LOSS IS THAT WE SIMPLY EXERCISE, PERIOD!!

Yes, timing is important. But what if a job or family prevents us from making it before noon? Is that bad? NOT AT ALL! As we all know, ANY EXERCISE IS BETTER THAN NO EXERCISE, NO MATTER WHAT THE TIME OF DAY!! Many people exercise after 6:00 pm each day…..and that’s great too! EVERY TIME we can get some exercise in, we will reap the benefits. The point of this article is to help us realize that morning exercise will help most of us more than evening exercise.

So keep exercising, and we’ll see each other at the gym!

(Adapted from “Time To Burn”; Muscle & Fitness; Nov, 2002)

* Copyright 2005 Pick Up The Pace. Permission is not required for the distribution of Pick Up The Pace articles as long as they are used in their entirety, are properly credited to Pick Up The Pace, and are accompanied by our website link: www.letspickupthepace.com.

* The information in this article and on this site is for general reference purposes only and not intended to address specific medical conditions. This information is not a substitute for professional medical advice or a medical exam. Prior to participating in any exercise program or activity, you should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health professional. No information in this article or on www.letspickupthepace.com should be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any medical condition.

Tracie Johanson is the founder of Pick Up The Pace, a 30-minute exercise studio for women, focusing on fitness, health and nutrition for maximum weight loss. Please visit http://www.letspickupthepace.com for more information.

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