Daily HealthBeat Tip

Not fun

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I�m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

We like to do what�s fun. And pushing too hard makes exercise not fun. This may be why many overweight people don�t like exercise.

Iowa State University researcher Paddy Ekkekakis had overweight and normal-weight women do 20 minutes on treadmills at speeds they chose and speeds 10 percent faster. His study in the International Journal of Obesity was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Ekkekakis found that overweight women worked harder than the normal-weight women even at the speed they selected. And while normal-weight women didn�t really mind 10 percent faster, overweight women didn�t like it.

"In conjunction with the finding that the self-selected speed allowed the overweight women to keep feeling good as they exercised, we must conclude that there seems to be no apparent reason for not allowing overweight women to self-select their intensity." (12 seconds)

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: June 9, 2006

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