Cycling to work really does make you thinner study confirms

It certainly does, but it doesn't make your hair grow back...I can confirm this

Should be 'if we can EFFECT a large modal shift'.

"cycling to work makes you thinner" . It does if you get squashed between 2 buses

Yes it establishes correlation, upon which we rely when drawing any conclusion based upon statistical analysis, including for example, which pharmaceutical drugs make it to market or not. So if this type of analysis is good enough to draw binary yes or no conclusions like that, then it should be good enough to draw binary conclusions like allocating more of the transport budget to active travel away from the car will produce beneficial public health outcomes. This has to be a good thing with the NHS creaking with record amounts of money (we don't have) being spent at the moment - an ounce of prevention being better than a pound of cure and all that.
Of course we could go into factors like "r squared" but that would be getting a little dull really. Far better to email the link to your MP/prospective candidates and say here's some respected research, where do you stand on it as it will influence how I vote.

For all those smartarses above, the BMJ article doesn't say active travel 'makes you slimmer', it just says that:

"- For both men and women, commuting by public or active transport modes was independently associated with significantly lower objective measures of overweight (body mass index and percentage body fat) compared with commuting by private motorised transport

- Further research using longitudinal data is required to confirm the direction of causality".

The cause might well be because, as has been noted above, fat people don't use active travel/public transport. But the paper doesn't make conclusions about causality. So please read the linked article before you comment about how smart you are---or how stupid scientists are.

Is it possible that for the majority of cycling commuters , being naturally thin is what pre disposes them to cycle to work rather than the other way around? Or is that just too laughable to be true?

Despite burning 3000kcal a day, my weight just won't change. I do get ravenously hungry, and you should always listen to your body right?

This is great news.

Now we've established cycling makes you thinner (I suspected this for some time), we just have to await confirmation that eating too much food makes you fat.
Once that happens, if we can get some government commission to join the dots, perhaps cycling infrastructure will be upgraded....maybe.

Slightly puzzled by the reported findings. "Travelled by public transport or were active for part of their commute" were "respectively" 1.1 or 0.97 BMI points thinner.

Odd that "active for part" achieved less reduction than public transport users. What do they mean by active? Perhaps running to catch that bus is more active than the "active" travel adopted by the second mentioned group? Surely public transport users are by definition part-active if we assume they don't drive to the bus stop or station and park right next to where they board their bus/train.

Whilst I get the 'do bears shit in the woods' response, with the majority of people in the UK (c 60+%) now overweight and obese, despite huge amounts of noise by government, media, NHS, etc etc, clearly most people do NOT understand what would seem utterly bleeding obvious to us...

The UK is in serious trouble economically already, and the impact on productivity and costs to the taxpayer of the additional load on the NHS could well see us getting poorer and poorer over the next generation, until we can get on top of this.

You kind of need studies like this as common sense appears to not exist when it comes to looking after ourselves

If it was my job to try and get the UK public to understand what we're doing to ourselves and our future wealth and health I think I'd be in despair at the moment.

BREAKING NEWS...

Detailed, scientific and peer reviewed study does indeed show that bears shit in the woods.

An insider states "yes, this study is unprecedented, incredible as it may seem but it's taken to 2014 before anyone actually got round to proving it".

Public transport does not pick me up from my front door and take me direct to the place i have to go to, unlike a car.

Public transport involves walking to a heck of a lot of bus stops or stations and dealing with a heck of a lot passengers (they give me chest pains)

This research is lame

I wonder if willingness to cycle and use public transport is indicative of a wider attitude that means you're likely to be thinner?

To the "No $hit Sherlock" brigade- if the study was about whether doing exercise can make you thinner you might have a point, but it's not is it? It's an interesting result that people who take public transport also tend to be slimmer.
Also, as others above have said, sometimes "it's just common sense, innit?" isn't enough to get at underlying causes or relationships, hence studies like this.

Unfortunately, as we already know, it doesn't matter what proof there is it only matters who has the loudest voice.

The lead on this is quite simple excercise makes people healthier which is great and obviously that is the angle the cycling community will see and all congratulate ourselves for being provable awesome.

However, mainstream media will go "shock!" and only look at the postive message and not the flip side, that is the cost of those inactive commuters and how they are costing the NHS stupid money and all the rest of it. Afterall, calling vast swathes of people fat, lazy and a drain on the economy isn't always a great selling point (well unless you are one particular newspaper), which unforutnatley the news business is. It isn't "all the news that fits" it is "all the news that sells".

BMI isn't the best measure, but it is easy to do, unlike measuring skinfolds etc. And there are quite a few people classified as overweight who think they are athletic and muscular, whereas they are a little podgy too!

I started cycling in to work around Christmas. I was a regular cyclist anyway, and already in the healthy BMI range (so fairly skinny according to some). I've lost half a stone despite making no other changes to my diet and lifestyle at all. I must admit I am quite surprised as I had plateaued at my previous weight for about 10 years.

My commute is quite hilly though!

Of course this is common sense stuff: Exercise (being active) makes you healthier.

However, as Arfa said, this peer-reviewed study is the sort of thing that is great to use in public policy debates and has a chance to influence serious, wide-ranging decisions regarding transport policy.

So, the headline outcome is laughable, but the study is very serious and affects us all.

Ah, f*ck: Do bears execrate among trees?

No shit Sherlock ……….

It took eminent scientists to work this out?! F*** me

How much grant money were these people paid?

Oh, BMI was the measure. Where muscular lean people are considered obese...

My utter inability to diet effectively is no longer a problem for me. Since I started cycling to work (32 mile round trip) I can eat like an animal and I am still shedding the pounds!

I think cycling in to the office on an empty stomach is the most effective part of this. "Fasted exercise" is what they call it.

Yes it is starting the bleeding obvious but it is a detailed statistical study from a highly respected medical journal (I recommend taking a look at it if you haven't already) establishing that active travel has desirable public health outcomes.
The other corollary is that commuting via car has a detrimental effect on individual obesity levels (regardless of pollution/congestion etc).
Hopefully another nail in the coffin for urban car commuting, as it is getting harder to justify the prioritisation of automobile infrastructure in transport spending.

BREAKING NEWS...

Bear shits in woods.

So, men in white coats, having completed this study are you going to ride to work now.

It would mean a lot more if it was women in normal clothes who figured this out.