Melvin Durai
When it comes to exercise, almost everyone falls into one of three categories: (1) those who exercise five to seven days per week; (2) those who exercise two to four days per week; and (3) those who exercise only in their dreams. Hardly anyone exercises just one day per week. Why bother? Can you really gain anything by exercising on Sundays if you hardly move a muscle the other six days? Apparently so. That’s what a study from The University of Hong Kong suggests. A research team from the university’s School of Public Health at the LKS Faculty of Medicine (HKUMed) conducted the study on 315 Chinese adults who had central obesity, but it seems reasonable to me that it could apply to everyone, even those who are not obese and not Chinese. If you have obesity, it means that you’ve gained so much excess fat that it’s harming your health. Obesity can be particularly harmful when the excess fat is located centrally around your abdomen. It puts you at risk for numerous health prob lems, including heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Central obesity is the worst kind of obesity.
Unfortunately, humans have no control over where our bodies store excess fat. If we did, we’d spread the fat around evenly, being quite content about going from Size 8 shoes to Size 15. The researchers found that for adults with central obesity who want to lose body fat and improve cardiorespiratory fitness, doing brisk interval walking once a week produces comparable results to a thrice-weekly schedule, as long as the total exercise time is the same. Three times a week is the traditional recommendation for exercise frequency. I try to exercise four times a week, but I’m fairly flexible. I just don’t go more than two days without exercising, unless I have a good excuse, such as severe illness, work deadlines, and important football games. Most people who run or walk for exercise keep the same pace throughout their workout. But according to the researchers, interval training is a more effective and efficient way to reduce body fat. In interval training, you alternate vigorous exercise with lower-intensity exercise.
You may, for example, walk briskly for five minutes, then walk slowly for five minutes. I like to run for five minutes, then sit for 10 minutes. To conduct their study, the researchers assigned the 315 adults into one of three groups: a once-weekly interval training group, a thrice-weekly interval training group or a control group. The lucky people in the control group didn’t have to do any interval training. All they were required to do was attend a 2.5-hour health education session every two weeks over a four-month period. The interval training groups completed 75 minutes of interval training per week for four months. Some did it in one session per week, while others did it in three sessions (25 minutes per session). The researchers found that after four months, both interval training groups had similarly reduced their excess fat and improved their cardiorespiratory fitness compared to the control group. “While thrice-weekly interval training remains a commonly recommended approach for the therapeutic management of excess adiposity, our findings show that once-weekly interval training offers similar benefits and represents a practical exercise strategy,” said Professor Parco Siu Ming-fai of HKUMed.
“For many adults with central obesity who struggle to balance work, study, family and other commitments, time constraints are a primary barrier to exercising multiple days per week.” It is indeed difficult for many people to find time to exercise, largely because they have so many demands on their time, including work assignments, family commitments, and “MusafirCafe” on Netflix. While thrice-weekly exercise is ideal, it’s better to exercise rigorously once a week than spend your entire week on the couch.
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