New research shows that “exercise can help prevent weight gain”…duh :-/

I’m on Yahoo! daily and because my job deals with health and nutrition as well as my degree, I’m constantly scanning the web for health-related topics. Today I came across headlines that read “Exercise Can Help Prevent Weight Gain, But It Won't Be Easy”, my first thought was “duh – doesn’t everyone already know that?” Then I read the article to see what it entailed. It talked about newly released research that followed 34,000 women average age 54.2 that were not on a diet and were physically active on a regular basis and over many years – they gained less weight. What was not surprising to me was the end result, what was surprising to me was that I thought this was common knowledge. Maybe because I’m currently taking a Nutrition Management course I think things that I’m learning are things that everyone already knows. Once I snapped out of it—I thought, “this should be general knowledge, people should know that when the energy you consume exceeds the energy you burn the end result is weight gain.” If people don’t know this and aren’t being taught this how are people suppose to single-handily avoid obesity? Nutrition professionals can’t expect every citizen to have a computer and log on to www.mypyramid.gov to learn how they should be eating. If people are getting this information from a common place (i.e. school) how are they expected to know it?

I feel like there is much to be conquered in the career path I have chosen and am eager to get started.

If you are interested in reading the full article, here is the url:
http://health.yahoo.com/featured/91/exercise-can-help-prevent-weight-gain-but-it-won-t-be-easy

Erika