Many women are fair-weather exercisers, walking an average of 2,000 more steps a day in the summer than in the winter, a study shows. That's about 1 mile more a day.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh tracked the physical activity of 508 post-menopausal women in the city for 18 months as part of a study looking at the impact of diet and exercise on women's risk of cardiovascular disease.
The participants wore pedometers and filled out questionnaires. They were divided into two groups. Some were in a diet-and-exercise intervention group and encouraged to do moderate-intensity physical activity, such as brisk walking, for 150 minutes a week. The others went to several health-education classes but didn't get intense exercise advice.
At the start of the research, participants in both groups walked an average of 7,616 steps a day during the summer and 5,304 steps a day in the winter. In the spring, they took about 5,850 steps each day.
"A lot of people like to walk outdoors, so it stands to reason that people would walk less in the winter, but to get the benefits of exercise you have to do it consistently all year long," says Mark Newman, a researcher in the university's department of epidemiology. The study is reported in February's Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the scientific journal of the American College of Sports Medicine.
After 18 months, the women in the diet-exercise group walked an average of 8,499 steps a day compared with 6,462 steps a day for those in the other group.
The women receiving encouragement to exercise kept their activity level up fairly consistently all year long, even in January and March, although their steps dropped a little in February. "You have to battle through the winter months," Newman says. "It's not always easy to go out and walk in the cold weather, but if you make it a priority, you'll do it."
Tim Church, director of preventive medicine research at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, says this study shows that your step levels "aren't written in stone. You can problem-solve and find ways to exercise during these challenging months."
In his research, Church has found that men are also more active in the summer than winter.
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