The More Overweight You Are, The More Exercise You Need

Overweight people are offered dozens of options and advices on how to loose weight, but it's still a question which program or advice is the best. This research suggests that the more overweight a women is, the more exercise she needs.

The research also says that the current recommendation of 30 minutes a day, or 150 minutes a week of exercising is not enough for loosing weight and maintaining the results.

"This clarifies the amount of physical activity that should be targeted for achieving and sustaining this magnitude of weight loss, but also demonstrates the difficulty of sustaining this level of physical activity," says John M. Jakicic, who led the study. "Research is needed to improve long-term compliance with this targeted level of physical activity."

A team of researchers from University of Pittsburgh looked at 201 overweight and obese women during a two year period. Women were divided into four groups according to daily calorie count and exercise. All women in the study were told to limit daily calories from 1200 to 1500. They were also told to exercise regularly, at least 10 minutes a day. Women were regularly monitoring heart rate and reporting to the researchers.

After the first six months almost every participant lost from 8% to 10% of initial body weight. However, women who did not exercise much enough gained the lost weight back. Only 25% of women maintained lost weight during the entire period of study. These are the women who exercised the most - at least 55 minutes a day, 5 days a week, or 275 minutes a week.

Women who maintained healthy weight also reported healthy eating habits, strong diet, which was changing from time to time to try as many diet advises as possible. They also reported to be more physically active at workplace, at home and outdoors.

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