Aerobic exercise is key to weight loss: Principles and practical guidelines

Step Three in Fat Loss: Get Your Aerobics Moving!

Most hospitals don't have a dedicated "weight loss department," but in reality, there is a department that's constantly busy helping patients lose weight: the diabetes department. When talking with colleagues in this department, they said that almost every type 2 diabetes patient needs to lose weight. To ensure smoother treatment, one of their essential tasks before starting treatment is to persuade patients to lose weight, maintain a regular exercise routine, and provide dietary advice.

The advice doctors often give boils down to just six simple words: "Control your diet, exercise more." Frankly, this is the core and key to weight loss. "Control your diet" means controlling your food intake and calorie consumption; "Exercise more" means increasing physical activity to accelerate calorie expenditure and prevent it from accumulating in the body.

"I always tell patients, 'This won't work.' Just focusing on eating without any exercise won't help you lose weight," my friend said.

"Are these suggestions effective?" I asked. “Honestly, most methods don’t work. Most patients are elderly and don’t have a habit of exercising normally; nowadays, exercise is even more inconvenient. At most, I suggest they take more walks or practice Tai Chi. But even these minimum requirements are rarely met…”

I completely understand my friend’s predicament. The key to weight loss is “eat less and move more.” It’s not simply about eating less or moving more. While walking and Tai Chi are excellent forms of exercise, for middle-aged and elderly patients, relying solely on these exercises to successfully lose weight is far from sufficient.

Movement isn’t the problem; the problem is how to move.

To find the answer, we need to re-evaluate the nature of exercise.

Human movement can generally be divided into three types:

The first type requires strong explosive power and can only be sustained for a few seconds, such as weightlifting and high jump;

The second type requires some explosive power but is shorter in duration, such as sprinting, hurdles, sit-ups, and push-ups;

The third type does not emphasize explosive power but only requires maintaining a certain rhythm, such as long-distance running, race walking, and yoga—this is aerobic exercise.

The difference between these three types of exercise lies not only in the amount of force and duration, but mainly in the mode of energy storage and the way energy is released.

Our bodies store various energy substances. Besides fat, the largest "energy storer" often mentioned, there are also adenosine triphosphate (ATP), creatine phosphate (CP), and muscle glycogen. Since energy is stored in the body, why are there different forms? Because they release energy in different ways.

An analogy can help explain this more simply. If calories are money, then adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and creatine phosphate (creating an ATP-CP system to release calories) are like a wallet, muscle glycogen (which provides energy through glycolysis and the release of lactic acid) is like a bank savings account, and fat (which provides energy through oxidation and the release of water and carbon dioxide) is like a bank time deposit.

When you need to shop (the first type of exercise), you take money directly from your wallet (ATP-CP energy). Since the wallet is carried with you, it's convenient (no oxygen consumption), which is equivalent to anaerobic exercise.

When the wallet runs out of money (the second type of exercise), you go to an ATM to withdraw cash (glycolysis energy). ATMs are also convenient; you can just swipe your card (no oxygen consumption either).

But if even savings aren't enough (the third type of exercise), then you need to use time deposits (fat energy). However, withdrawing time deposits is more troublesome; you have to queue at the bank (oxygen consumption), which is what we call aerobic exercise.

Strictly speaking, during exercise, the three energy sources occur simultaneously; the analogy above only roughly illustrates that different types of exercise release calories in different ways.

At this point, you should better understand why intense exercise (anaerobic exercise) is ineffective for fat loss. This is because when you perform anaerobic exercise, your body simply doesn't have enough time to burn fat and can only utilize the other two calorie storage methods. Furthermore, during anaerobic exercise, the body releases lactic acid, which causes muscle soreness, making it difficult to continue.

Therefore, to effectively lose fat, there is only one way: consistently engage in aerobic exercise.