Biking for as little as five minutes a day can help women minimize weight gain as they enter middle age, especially if they’re overweight to begin with, a new study suggests.
The study followed more than 18,000 premenopausal women between the ages of 25 and 42 for 16 years. During that time, the women gained an average of about 20.5 pounds.
Women who started biking for just five minutes a day gained about 1.5 fewer pounds over the course of the study than similar women who didn’t take up biking, the researchers found. Women who increased their daily biking by 30 minutes during the study kept even more weight off, gaining about 3.5 fewer pounds than those whose biking habits stayed the same.
