Just five minutes of riding a bicycle each day can help a younger woman keep the pounds off, the team at the Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston reported.
"Small daily increments in bicycling helped women control their weight. But the more time women spent bicycling, the better," said Harvard's Rania Mekary, who worked on the study.
Mekary's team studied 18,414 healthy women who had not yet gone through menopause taking part in the Brigham and Women's Hospital-based Nurses' Health Study, an ongoing study of women's health over time.
On average, the nurses gained about 20 pounds (9.3 kilograms) over the 16-year period.
The women who did not bicycle in 1989 who had started by 2005 were a quarter less likely to have gained weight, even if they rode for just five minutes a day, the researchers said.
"Unlike discretionary gym time, bicycling could replace time spent in a car for necessary travel of some distance to work, shops or school as activities of daily living," the researchers wrote.
"Bicycling could then be an unconscious form of exercise because the trip's destination, and not the exercise, could be the goal." - Reuters
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