Questão 17 - UNIVESP 2021/2

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

    Can exercise help us shed pounds? An interesting new study involving overweight men and women found that working out can help us lose weight, in part by remodeling appetite hormones. But to benefit, the study suggests, we most likely have to exercise a lot — burning at least 3,000 calories a week. In the study, that meant working out six days a week for up to an hour, or around 300 minutes a week.

    For the new study, researchers gathered a group of 44 sedentary, overweight men and women, checked their body compositions, and asked half of them to start exercising twice a week, for at least 90 minutes, until they had burned about 750 calories a session, or 1,500 for the week. The rest of the volunteers began exercising six times a week for about 40 to 60 minutes, burning close to 500 calories a session, for a weekly total of about 3,000 a week.

    Interestingly, the researchers did uncover one unexpected difference between the groups. Those burning about 3,000 calories a week showed changes now in their bodies’ levels of leptin, an appetite hormone that can reduce appetite. These alterations suggested that exercise had increased the exercisers’ sensitivity to the hormone, enabling them to better regulate their desire to eat. There were no comparable hormonal changes in the men and women working out less.

^{(Gretchen Reynolds. www.nytimes.com, 09.12.2020. Adaptado.)}

De acordo com o estudo citado no segundo parágrafo,