Dr. Gary Goldfield (Clinical Scientist) was recently interviewed about one of his recent studies on the mental health benefits of exercise in teens by Global News in an article, “‘Throw away the scale’ to improve mental health: study“.

From the article:

When you hear the words ‘successful exercise program,’ you may be inclined to think of scales, measuring tape and the seemingly unreachable goal of wearing a smaller size of pants.

But a new study suggests that even light to moderate exercise that yields no weight loss or change in body fat has a positive mental health effect on overweight and obese teens.

The lead researcher is Dr. Gary Goldfield, a registered psychologist, clinical researcher at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario (CHEO) Research Institute, and associate professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Ottawa. Goldfield has conducted many treatment studies for overweight teens, including nutrition and web-based interventions.

In this study, Goldfield wanted to know how exercise impacts psychosocial factors like body dissatisfaction, social alienation and low self-esteem in overweight teens, since these teens are often at higher risk for these factors. He says previous research tended to show that people who lost the most weight in exercise interventions reaped the greatest psychosocial benefits.

“But this didn’t show that,” Goldfield said. “It showed that psychosocial benefits can be derived from exercise in the absence of weight loss or changes in body composition – BMI.”

Click here to read the article in full.

Dr. Goldfield has also been interviewed about this study elsewhere: