For significant weight loss, it would be necessary to practice 2.5 hours of physical activity every week, for at least two months, according to a new study.
- You should practice at least 2.5 hours of sport per week to lose weight.
- This would also reduce body fat and waist size.
- It is advisable to practice moderate-intensity physical activity, such as running or swimming.
If your January resolution is to lose weight, a study published in JAMA should interest you. Its authors, researchers from Imperial College London and Shahroud and Semnan Universities of Medical Sciences in Iran, looked at the amount of physical exercise needed to lose weight. They collected and studied the results of 116 clinical trials on the subject.
Sport and weight loss: you must exceed two hours of physical activity per week
In total, this various work brought together nearly 7,000 participants, overweight or obese.
“Levels of body weight, waist circumference, and body fat decreased linearly or monotonically with increasing duration of aerobic exercise at moderate to vigorous intensities at 300 minutes per week.observe the authors. “Aerobic exercise performed at least 150 minutes per week was associated with clinically important reductions in waist circumference and body fat measures.”
For this amount of exercise, the weight loss was 2.8 pounds on average. This corresponds to 2.5 hours of sport, the intensity of which does not exceed 70% of maximum heart rate, for a minimum of eight weeks. Exercising for less than 30 minutes a day, five times a week, only produces small reductions in weight, the authors point out.
Sport: reduce the risk of cardiovascular pathologies
This echoes the recommendations of English health authorities: the National Health Service advises Britons to practice daily physical activity. “People aged 19 to 64 should do at least two and a half hours of moderate exercise, or 75 minutes of intense exercise, every week to stay fit and reduce the risk of conditions like heart attacks and accidents. cerebral vascularnoted Tea Guardian.
Moreover, the French receive similar advice from theHealth Insurance to stay healthy. The instruction given on its website is to “practice the equivalent of at least 30 minutes of dynamic physical activity per day (e.g. brisk walking) at least 5 times per week, do muscle strengthening, flexibility and balance activities at least twice per week “.
How to do more sport every day?
But Dr Ahmad Jayedi, epidemiologist at Imperial College London, and first author of this study, recalls that this may seem complicated to achieve for some people. He then advises finding a form of physical exercise adapted to daily constraints. This could be increasing the amount of daily walking by getting off the bus or train earlier, for example.
“Regarding sport, all forms are beneficial and we have not evaluated any difference between them, he explains to Guardian. However, walking and running are great examples of aerobic activities that can easily be incorporated into our daily lives.”
