Login | December 21, 2024
Weekend workouts better than nothing at all
PETE GLADDEN
Pete’s World
Published: September 30, 2024
Have you been looking to loose some weight but your life schedule is so hectic that the only physical activity time you could possibly justify is on the weekend?
Well, if this is your world I just might have some good news for you.
That’s right, because In a first of its kind study that looked into the association between physical activity patterns and accurately measured adipose (fat) tissue loss, researchers determined that multi-days/week exercise routines and one-to-two days/week exercise routines are both acceptable exercise frequencies that can foster weight loss.
The study, “The associations of “weekend warrior” and regularly active physical activity with abdominal and general adiposity in US adults,” was published in the Feb. 20, 2024 edition of Obesity: A Research Journal.
So this study was prompted in part by the World Health Organization’s physical activity (PA) guidelines, which recommend that adults engage in at least 150 minutes of moderate PA per week with at least 75 of those minutes at a vigorous intensity.
Based on these WHO guidelines this study’s researchers questioned the feasibility of PA compliance in light of today’s fast-paced society.
They made light of the fact that many people have sedentary activity levels in both their work and post-work lives, and because of those work and family duties far too many people just don’t have a lot any time throughout the week for physical activity.
Thus, based on that observation the researcher’s question became: Might individuals condense exercise sessions down to one-to-two days a week and lose weight just like the individuals who have time to exercise on a more regular basis?
Now to answer that question what the researchers did was analyze data from an eight-year long National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey that entailed more than 9,600 participants whose ages ranged from 20 to 59 years old.
In that NH&H study abdominal fat had been accurately assessed via dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DXA), and the participants PA levels were assessed via the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire - where participants rated their PA level as either inactive, weekend warrior or regularly active.
Now that PA questionnaire revealed that 772 individuals displayed weekend warrior activity patterns while 3,277 displayed regular activity patterns.
The remaining 5,580 individuals considered themselves inactive.
What was interesting here is that when the researchers cross referenced the PA questionnaire results with the fat tissue loss results over that long eight-year stretch of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, they discovered some rather telling results.
Indeed, and those results indicated that the weekend warriors and regularly active individuals had not only both lost abdominal fat percentages, but both groups had also lowered their waist circumferences, lessened their whole-body fat mass and lowered their body mass indexes.
What’s more, they also ascertained that these two different physical activity groups were typically younger, non-Hispanic White, had a higher educational background and were less likely to be unemployed and/or to be hypertensive or diabetic.
Another interesting facet of this data dissemination venture was the fact that the researchers also discovered that the weekend warriors typically worked out longer and at a higher intensity than the folks who’s activity patterns were regular.
And those longer, more intense workouts correlated with lower levels of abdominal fat.
Now there’s an interesting aside to all of this.
I’ve subsequently shared the conclusions of this study with several friends and family members and everyone has responded in the same way, which can be paraphrased as: “I guess this means that some kind of exercise is better than no exercise at all.”
And wouldn’t you know it, this response is exactly what other researchers not associated with this study have also said.
One such researcher, Beverly Tchang, assistant professor of clinical medicine in New York, said this, "On a high level, this study reaffirms the old adage about physical activity and health: any activity is better than no activity.”
So if you want a takeaway here, how about this: We should be physically active in any manner and in any pattern that suits our lifestyle.