People looking to shed the pounds in 2024 could very well find success by getting their booties on the floor tonight — or any night — a new study tying dance to weight loss suggests.
Chinese researchers found that those willing to get up, get busy, get up and move that body showed meaningful positive changes in body mass, waist size and fat mass, according to results published in the journal PLOS ONE.
Dancers also benefited from lowered blood pressure and improved mental health.
Improvements in conditions like diabetes, gallstones, hypertension, and cardiovascular ailments were also registered.
“Dance is effective on fat loss in people with overweight and obesity, and has a significant improvement on body composition and morphology,” co-author Yaya Zhang, a PhD student at Hunan University, China, said.
Researchers recognized the difficulty of sustaining a long-term positive habit, landing on dance as a form of sustainable exercise that can be enjoyed regularly, SNWS reported.
“For its high efficiency and greater sense of enjoyment, dance can be a beneficial exercise intervention for fat loss,’ Zhang said.
“As a form of physical activity that integrates exercise, entertainment, and sociality, dance possesses innate advantages in fostering motivation for exercise.”
“Duration lasting for more than three months, along with creative dance forms, is more conducive to achieving clinical objectives related to improvements in body composition.”
“Simultaneously with fat loss, dance preserves and enhances the body morphology of the participants.”
“Moreover, dance is particularly well-suited for the young population, those under 45,” Zhang said.
The team studied 646 people struggling with obesity, across ten different studies.
The more creative the dance style, the bigger the positive changes, researchers noted.
Included in the study were overweight children and patients with Parkinson’s disease — both showed measured improvements.
Study authors pointed out the difference between dance and regular aerobic exercise or other intensive training styles, dance had a clear advantage when it came to shedding the pounds, thanks to the full-body workout dancers get, with a lessened risk of quick fatigue.
In other words — three, four, so get your butt on the floor.
