Could Going to the Gym be Making You Fatter?

by Ian Drury, Kirsty Walker, and Michael Lea

Remember your New Year's resolution to lose weight? Seems a long time ago, doesn't it. Maybe you cracked in the first week - or maybe, just maybe, you've stuck with it.

You've cut out the snacks, chocolate is but a memory, and you've dragged yourself to the gym every day. So why is it that instead of resembling Nicole Kidman, you still look like Dawn French?

The awful truth for every would-be slimmer is that going to the gym is unlikely to make you thin. It may even have the opposite effect: it could actually make you fatter. This will have personal trainers chewing their smelly insoles in fury, but there is sound science behind the theory that gym-going could actually impede weight loss.

The problem is the kind of exercise most dieters favour. Most eschew the weights area, inhabited by its hardcore of scary looking men.

'Women can have a block about weights,' says clinical psychologist Victor Thompson, who runs a specialist sports psychology practice. 'The fact is, many assume we have to be big and butch to lift weights, or, if we're not, that's how we'll end up looking.

'So your average dieter goes hell for leather on the treadmill, rowing machine or cross trainer. People see getting a sweat on as the way to burn calories.'

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April 1, 2009

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