Are moderate exercises better than intensive exercises?

Moderate exercise may be even better than intensive exercise for losing weight. For example, Dr. John Duncan divided 102 sedentary women into three groups. Each group was asked to walk three miles, five days per week. One group walked three miles in thirty-six minutes, one group walked that distance in forty-six minutes, and one group strolled the same three miles in one hour. To the surprise of many, he found that the strollers lost more weight than the women in the other two groups. In other words, those who walked slower lost more body fat than those who walked the same distance but faster.

Why? The number of calories they burned was the same, but the type of calories varied. For short, intense exercise, your body tends to burn carbohydrates, because it takes less time to convert carbohydrates into glucose, your body’s fuel. Longer, slower exercise gives your body a chance to use body fat as fuel.

In other studies, researchers have found that regular, moderate exercise tends to decrease appetite, food intake, and body weight, whereas vigorous exercise tends to increase appetite and food intake. And if you exercise instead of snacking at the times when you’re most tempted to overeat - for example, when you’re stressed, lonely, or unhappy - then you’ll get a double benefit.