Diet, with a Side of Exercise Please
New study shows that older people need diet and exercise to lose weight and prevent muscle loss
In a study of 64 overweight or obese participants ages 60 to 75 conducted by the University of Pittsburgh, older people who diet without exercising lose lean muscle mass.
Split into groups of diet-only, exercise-only and exercise-plus-diet participants, researchers were able to see that diet-only participants' weight loss was a combination of muscle and fat. Despite losing the most calories out of all three groups, researchers found that older people should be more concerned with keeping muscle mass, which tends to decrease as people age and is vital in keeping up with day-to-day activities.
Study results also showed that combining both exercise and diet nearly completed prevented the loss of muscle mass. The exercise-plus-diet group lost fewer calories than the other groups, but became the most efficient at exercise tasks of walking on the treadmill or riding a stationary bike at the end of the experiment.
Senior researcher Bret H. Goodpaster, an adjunct assistant professor of health and physical activity at the University of Pittsburgh, says that overall exercise provided more benefits than diet.
"The take-home message is that, even among older people and during a fairly short period of time, exercise produces metabolic changes that require the expenditure of fewer calories during physical activity," Goodpaster says. "Exercise also allowed older people to more preferentially burn fat, which may be healthier metabolically."
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