Cycle your way to weight loss
Researchers have found that brisk walking and cycling go a long way in weight management of premenstrual women. Slow walking however will do you no good, as far as weight issues are concerned.
According to Anne C Lusk, of the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston and author of the study, biking has been particularly found to help overweight and obese women keep the weight off.
A few hours of weekly cycling are all it takes. The study analyzed the weights of over 18,414 women over a period of 15 years from 1989 to 2005. The authors looked at medical weight and lifestyle data of the pre-menopausal women, aged between 25 and 42 years, who participated in the ongoing Nurses' Health Study II.
It was observed that the women who cycled for at least two or three hours a week were 46 percent less likely to gain weight, more than 5 percent of their baseline body weight.
Lusk encouraged a regular physical routine, especially for premenopausal women who were struggling with weight issues.
According to her study in 1989 about half the women spend time slow walking, 39 percent said they walked briskly and 48 percent started bicycling.
By 2005 most women reported spending more time walking briskly and the least time bicycling. Those who were inactive in 1989 but had started biking in 2005 showed much less weight gain compared to 20 percent weight gain among those who had significantly decreased their active time.
The findings also downplayed the benefits of slow walking. Walking less than three miles an hour was found to be useless for weight loss.
It was also observed that the benefits of an active lifestyle were likely to have more effect on overweight and obese women compared with lean women, while slow walking gave no benefit even to overweight and obese women.
The results of the research have been published in the 28 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.
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