How Much Exercise Do Women Need?

For years, experts have been debating how much exercise a woman really needs, and finally, there's an answer: enough to burn about 1,000 calories a week. That's 143 a day—roughly what you'd melt during a 30-minute power walk or a 20-minute jog.

A new study at the University of Pittsburgh compared sedentary women on a healthy diet who worked off 1,000 calories a week with those who burned twice as many. The results? Surprisingly, the women who did double the workout didn't reap greater rewards: A treadmill stress test and EKG showed that the cardiovascular fitness of the two groups improved by about the same amount. While the study didn't measure changes in blood pressure or cholesterol, many experts say it's clear that moderate exercise is all you need to get heart-health benefits. "This is proof that you don't have to run a marathon. We're talking about something as simple as a brisk, half-hour walk," says Harvard researcher I-Min Lee. "Exercise is like insurance against heart disease." One area in which working out harder pays off: weight loss. In the yearlong study, women who doubled their efforts lost as much as five pounds more.

Source: Glamour, January 2003