Daily HealthBeat Tip

That weight

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

Middle-aged spread. Curses on it. Many of us who are middle-aged have seen those awful pounds creep up the scale. The reason: Our metabolisms slow down. Our eating does not.

But a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Alyson Littman, has been studying people who have a way to slow the weight creep. Her study of data on more than 15,000 middle-aged people over 10 years was supported by the National Institutes of Health and published in the International Journal of Obesity.

Littman says being active makes a big difference:

"For about an hour and a half of fast or moderate walking per week, these people tended to gain about two to 10 pounds less than people who did no walking." (eight seconds)

Other calorie-burning activities � biking, for instance � also count.

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: October 6, 2005

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