A recent study shows that even fairly moderate regular activity
helps maintain a healthy body weight. Researchers examined the
relationship between physical activity (PA) and weight
maintenance/weight gain in a large group (46,754) of
premenopausal women (aged 25 to 43 years old). Participants
signed up for the study in 1989 and checked in again in 1997.
62% of the population gained more than 5% of their baseline
weight by 1997. One important difference between weight gainers
and weight maintainers was physical activity. Women who
exercised less than 30 min per day were much more likely to gain
weight than women who exercised more than 30 min per day. This
was true even for women whose only activity was walking,
although the faster they walked, the better they did.
Jogging/running was even better than walking for helping to
maintain weight. The more exercise women did, the more they were
able to maintain their weight, but even small increases in
activity (between 11 and 20 min daily) helped a lot, especially