Approach to Exercise: What It’s Good For and What it’s Not

Exercise is one of the most potent therapeutic interventions in medicine when it comes to improving body composition, reducing disease risk, and promoting longevity and well-being. With that said exercise, alone, is not generally an effective primary tool for weight loss but can help with prevention of weight gain and may help with prevention of weight regain after weight loss.

Despite its limitations as a weight loss tool, there are many proven health benefits of exercise (both endurance/aerobic and resistance training). For example:

• Exercise—in particular, resistance training—helps to preserve bone mass, which reduces the risk for fractures in the future (particularly amongst post-menopausal women).
• Similarly, exercise (and resistance training in particular) can help preserve or even augment muscle mass, which can have positive effects on functionality and metabolic health.
• Regular exercise has a dramatic positive impact on mood, stress, anxiety, and energy levels. Regular daily exercise has been shown to be as effective as new generation antidepressant SSRI medications in treating some types of depression and anxiety. It can also improve people’s self-esteem.
• Exercise has a potent effect on cognitive function and brain health, and reduces the risk of dementia and cognitive decline.
• Exercise increases longevity and the years spent in good health (a.k.a. “health span”).
• Exercise lowers cardiovascular risk by improving LDL and HDL cholesterol levels and reducing blood pressure.
• Exercise improves blood glucose and hemoglobin A1c levels and insulin sensitivity (and, as a result, lowers the risk of developing type 2 diabetes).
• Regular exercise improves your fitness, strength, endurance, and sleep—all of which make it easier to stay active and vibrant as you age.

Ideally, we would like JumpstartMD members to exercise for 30 to 60 minutes per day, most days of the week—including at least two to three sessions per week of resistance training. This is primarily for metabolic health, body composition, longevity, and wellbeing, not weight loss.

• Everyone is different so know thyself
• For weight loss and maintenance, focus primarily on low carb, portion-controlled food and drink (but see # 1 bullet above: know thyself as we’re all unique)
• To avoid collateral damage to joints and tendons caused by the physical stress of excess weight, it may be better to delay pursuit of an exercise routine until after you’ve shed some pounds
• When you choose a routine to pursue, answer the question:
  • What do you love doing?
  • What do you miss doing?
  • Work with your Health Coach to develop a plan to get you there so that you can move exercise from your to do list to your I want to do list.
  • Schedule it.
  • Do it!
• Aerobic plus resistance training is optimal
• Low carb diet produces optimal body composition improvements in combination with aerobic plus resistance training
• Low carb lifestyles necessitate adequate hydration and the replenishing of sodium (and electrolytes)
• Low carb (keto) adaptation takes time to achieve exercise benefits
• (Safely) adding in higher intensity training levels provide additional benefits and improves efficiency in a world where a perceived lack of time is the primary barrier to regular exercise
• Find a buddy, trainer, group, or team for accountability, support, and social element of exercise
• Something is better than nothing