For those of us triathletes...shall we say...on a see food diet; we sea food and we eat it. A new study holds out the promise of longevity and even increased heath.
The recent excercise study concludes:
"Aerobic fitness alone is a key predictor of longevity," says Glenn Gaesser, an exercise physiologist at the University of Virginia. It doesn't matter whether the individual loses weight or if they have other risk factors associated with disease, Gaesser says.
Increasing fitness just a little bit, he says, "reduces the chances of dropping dead of a heart attack."
Church's study also found that the more exercise women did, the better off they were in terms of fitness. Women who biked or walked on treadmills for 3 hours per week ended up about twice as fit as those who exercised for just 71 minutes a week.
This study shows people don't have to exercise a lot to start seeing some benefits, says I-Min Lee, a professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston."
Now this does not mean that losing weight is of the menu. In fact if you want to go fast the best way to increase your speed is to lose weight.
Less weigh is a big advantage on the bike, and a huge advantage on the run. From a power to weight ratio perspective the thinner you are, the faster you will go. After all you don't have all of the extra weight to carry around with you on the race course.
But from a longevity perspective this new study confirms what many of us Clydesdale's and Athene's have long suspected: that even a little bit of exercise goes a long way.