Weight loss not necessary to gain health benefits from exercise

Even if you don't lose weight, you can still gain health benefits from exercising, according to a report presented at the annual meeting of the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Exercise is doing a lot of good whether you lose weight or not.

Overweight or even obese individuals who are fit have a much lower death rate than normal-weight individuals who are unfit. Being active and fit has health benefits over and above benefits of weight loss or weight maintenance.

People should adopt a lifestyle of physical activity. People should look for ways to accumulate short stints of activity throughout the day. This gives people the same health benefits, more flexibility and more control. Splitting up the time of physical activity works just as well as doing it all at once.

Instead of 40 minutes at a pop, break it up into sessions of no less than 10 minutes at a time. This way you would do significantly more exercise.

Its observed that 30 minutes of moderate walking every day, at 3 or 4 miles an hour, would make most obese people fit.

Obese individuals who are fit develop diabetes at about the same rate as the lean individuals who are unfit.