Physical activity linked to lesser body fat

Adolescent girls with more physical activity have a lower percentage of body fat as compared to those who are less active. Food intake and physical activity have a direct impact on one's body size. And not only is this relevant to adults, it especially hold true for adolescent girls. It has been seen that middle school girls who are more physically active have a lower percentage of body fat than their counterparts with lower activity levels. With an additional 11 minutes of daily exercise, girls of this age can reduce body fat to a great extent. To assess the relationship between physical activity and body fat, researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill calculated body fat among 1,576 girls in the sixth grade, who were randomly selected from six middle schools in six different metropolitan areas across the country. The girls wore an accelerometer belt over a 6-day period to measure their daytime physical activity. The investigators repeated these measurements 2 years later in 3,085 eighth-grade girls. The food intake of these girls was left as it is. The results showed that the percentage of body fat was 2.64 points higher among sixth grade girls with the lowest levels of physical activity compared with those with the highest levels. It was found that girls who averaged 12.8 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous activity each day, compared with those who averaged 34.7 minutes, were 2.3-times more likely to be overweight. To add to this, girls who increased their activity levels by 6.2 minutes per day between the sixth and eighth grade had a decrease in body fat that was nearly 0.3 percentage points lower than girls who decreased their activity levels by 4.5 minutes over the 2-year period. It is, thus, vital to include some amount of physical activity for adolescent girls to remain fit and healthy.