Physical activity patterns in healthy middle-aged women

ABSTRACT

Exercise in healthy female adults around the menopausal transition has been routinely examined in leisure activities alone, potentially discounting the physical activity (PA) that is accumulated in household and outdoor domains. The purpose of this study was to quantify PA in healthy middle-aged women and to examine the extent to which the Center for Disease Control (CDC) PA guidelines were met through leisure, household, and outdoor activities. Methods: 440 healthy women, 51–64 years old, BMI ≥18.5 or < 40 kg/m², participated in the study using the Lifetime Physical Activity Questionnaire (LPAQ) to quantify PA. Results: 25.91% met the CDC PA guidelines if leisure time alone was examined. When multiple domains were included, 73.41% of the women met the PA guidelines. This percentage is much higher than the reported 20.6% of U.S. adults who met the guidelines in 2011. PA in women may be underrepresented in data limited to leisure time PA.

KEYWORDS:

• Activity
• exercise
• household
• leisure
• middle-aged women
• outdoor
• physical activity
• physical activity guidelines

Additional information

Funding

The project described was supported by Grant Number R01HD057895-01 from the Eunice Kennedy Schriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and by the National Center for Research Resources and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, National Institutes of Health, through Grant 8UL1TR000105 (formerly UL1RR025764). Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.