Diet-Exercise Program Rates as Best Way to Lose Weight

Losing weight through diet alone or by exercise alone are equally effective in improving cholesterol and blood pressure levels, a study by Stanford University shows.

But Dr. Peter Wood of Stanford’s Center for Research and Disease Prevention, said a weight loss program that combines diet and exercise is the best way to achieve the optimum physical and physiological benefit.

Wood and Drs. Stephen Fortmann and William Haskell presented their findings at the Conference on Cardiovascular Disease Epidemiology sponsored by the American Heart Assn. in San Francisco.

The study was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and investigated changes in cholesterol levels and blood pressure to see how they were affected by different methods of weight loss.

Wood said each weight loss method--diet or exercise--similarly reduced blood pressure levels and increased levels of high-density lipoprotein, the so-called “good cholesterol” believed to help prevent heart disease.

In the study, 155 healthy but moderately overweight men were divided into three groups: an exercise-only group that jogged 10 miles a week, a diet-only group that decreased its caloric intake by about 300 calories a day, and a control group that did not change its diet or exercise habits at all.

After one year, the diet-only group had lost an average of 16 pounds and the exercise-only group lost an average of 10 pounds, Wood said. But the percentage of body fat in both groups remained the same, he said.