HHS HealthBeat (September 8, 2010)

Walking, biking and controlling weight

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Researchers say a little more time or effort might pay off in weight control for women who are already biking or walking for exercise – or who want to start. At the Harvard School of Public Health, Anne Lusk saw it in data on almost 18,500 premenopausal women.

Lusk says women walkers who picked up the pace and walked briskly had a lot better chance of holding off the weight gain that typically comes as women get older. Not so for other walkers:

"The women tended to gain more than 5 percent of their baseline body weight if they slow-walked." (6 seconds)

For bikers, as little as five minutes more a day helped with weight control.

The study in Archives of Internal Medicine was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: November 21, 2011