Doctor explains how once-a-week exercise can cut your belly fat as study backs up claim
While there’s countless dieting fads, programmes, camps, treatments and dreams sold to help people lose weight, one free thing will always remain: exercise.
Sure, not all exercise is accessible to everyone, and weight-loss can look very different for different people. But for the majority, working out and keeping fit is one of the easiest ways to be healthy.
And falling under that umbrella is a simple exercise that a study says can be done just once a week to help cut belly fat – brisk interval walking.
A YouTube doctor has also explained how it works as he recommends doing it daily if you can. But researchers at the School of Public Health at the LKS Faculty of Medicine, the University of Hong Kong (HKUMed), say that if you do the exercise weekly it can ‘reduce body fat and improve cardiorespiratory fitness in adults with central obesity’.
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Dr Sethi breaks the exercise down
On YouTube, Dr Saurabh Sethi offers health advice and explained the interval walking technique as he described how it would be done multiple times a week.
“It is called interval walking, that is alternate three minutes of slow walking with three minutes of brisk walking,” he said.
He says to imagine you’re rushing to ‘an important meeting’ to pick up the pace.
“Do this for 30 minutes daily and the results are impressive,” Dr Sethi added.
The doctor suggests that the exercise can help to ‘better blood pressure, reduced stroke risk, improved mood, boosted immunity and better sleep quality’.
“To start, walk at a comfortable pace for three to five minute,” he described. “Then alternate slow and brisk walking, finish with a three-to-five-minute cooldown. It is joint-friendly, time-efficient and very effective.”
The study
“The benefits were comparable to those seen in participants who exercised three times per week, which is the frequency commonly recommended in traditional exercise guidance,” the study on ScienceDaily explains.
Researchers conducted a four-month trial with 315 adults with central obesity.
They found that: “Completing 75 minutes of brisk interval walking in a single weekly session reduced body fat, trimmed waistlines, and improved cardiovascular fitness about as effectively as splitting the same exercise across three days.”
The study pointed out that exercise plays a key role in managing obesity as well as offering a wide range of health benefits.
“Interval training alternates between more vigorous periods of exercise and lower-intensity periods of active recover,” it explains. “Research has shown that it can be a time-efficient way to reduce overall body fat and visceral fat compared with continuous exercise performed at a moderate intensity.”
The study aimed to see if doing it once a week rather than the usual ‘exercising three times a week’ had the same benefits.
"While thrice-weekly interval training remains a commonly recommended approach for the therapeutic management of excess adiposity, our findings show that once-weekly interval training offers similar benefits and represents a practical exercise strategy," said Professor Parco Siu Ming-fai, Professor and Head of Division of Kinesiology at the School of Public Health, HKUMed.
"For many adults with central obesity who struggle to balance work, study, family and other commitments, time constraints are a primary barrier to exercising multiple days per week."
"Instead of relying solely on high-frequency exercise prescriptions, once-weekly interval training can be considered a feasible and effective alternative," added Professor Siu.
Always seek medical advice from a healthcare professional.
Jess Battison