If you’re trying to get REALLY fit, how long does it take to REALLY change your body shape?

Six months to a year. A good article in the NY Times a few days ago.

Personal Best – Fitness Isn’t an Overnight Sensation – NYTimes.com

CARL FOSTER, an exercise physiologist at the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse, was amused by ads for a popular piece of exercise equipment. Before-and-after photos showed pudgy men and women turned into athletes with ripped bodies of steel. And it all happened after just 12 weeks of exercising for 30 minutes three times a week. Then there was the popular book, with its own before-and-after photos, promoting a program that would totally change your body in six weeks with three 20-minute exercise sessions a week.

There are many examples of people who took up exercise and markedly changed their appearance. But how long does it take? And how much time and effort are required? Six weeks sounded crazy to Dr. Foster.

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People who did change their bodies say six months is a bare minimum to see real change.

Schuyler Antane, 43, a research scientist, is one. He began in January 2006 with a diet, which meant, he said, “letting go of the foods that taste good, but are wicked evil. And no more beer.”

In three months, he had lost 10 pounds and was down to 190 pounds on his 5-foot-8-inch frame. Then he read a magazine article on 5-kilometer races and decided to try to run. He could run for only five minutes when he started, and it took two months to train for his first race. But he kept at it and improved. Within six months, he weighed about 150 pounds. Then he added bicycling and swimming, becoming a triathlete. That, he said, got him to his fighting weight of 140 to 145 pounds.

“My beer belly is long gone,” he said. “The only flab in my midsection is excess skin, but I am not vain enough to have an operation.”

Now, said Mr. Antane, who runs with a group in Princeton on Thursday nights, “everything changed — my outlook on life, who I hung out with, how I felt about myself.”

Further proof that it pays to not get out of shape.