It's Official. It's not our Fault.

Did you see the news today out of the Women's Health Study? That's the study that's been continuing for the past 13 years looking at 34,000 women across the country. They're looking at everything. And, I do mean everything!

Today they released information about women and weight control. Seems that in middle years women need at least 60 minutes of exercise a day just to keep off additional weight gain, and that's only if they were of "normal weight" to begin with. Let's parse that a bit. If a woman is of normal weight prior to menopause, then if she exercises 60 minutes a day she can stay the same. If she is already overweight, then 60 minutes a day won't cause any loss. Ya gotta cut the calories to do that.

In some ways it's what we all know: cut calories and exercise more. The big kick in the (over sized) ass is that "more" starts after one finishes the first hour every day.

To get personal, now I understand why the three trips a week to Jazzercise have not done me as much good as I had hoped. Well, I do have abs now, but they are still buried in an inch of adipose tissue. I have been feeling so good about myself since I increased my exercise to 180 minutes a week - 30 minutes more than the previous recommendation of 150 minutes a week. And it's the first time in my life that I have voluntarily stuck with an exercise plan for 18 months!

I knew that I needed to add some more exercise because, altho I have tightened up some, I am not losing any weight. I had already decided to add a walk a couple more mornings to try to kick it up a bit. [And, yes, I know I need to cut calories, but that's a whole different blog.]

Now I don't know if it's worth it or not? Actually, I know that it is, I'm just bummed by the prospect of at least tripling my current efforts. And, I am a tiny bit happy to learn that I'm not a totally worthless lazy fool. It's at least partly nature.