Exercise: Teen girls are just saying 'no'
 

AP) -- The amount of regular exercise girls get falls off dramatically as they move through their teenage years, dropping to practically zero in many cases, especially among blacks, a study found.

By the time they were 16 or 17, more than half of the black girls in the study and nearly a third of the white girls reported they got no regular exercise at all outside school.

With obesity at epidemic levels, "it's a cause for alarm," said Dr. Sue Y.S. Kimm of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "We cannot sit complacent anymore."

Kimm and her colleagues reported their findings in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

She said that there has been no similar study of boys but that they are generally more active because of their greater participation in sports.

The study did not ask the girls why they were not exercising.

"Is it they think it's less cool? They're more interested in shopping? Does it seem like more of a tomboy-ish activity? These are all interesting questions worth pursuing," said Eva Obarzanek, a research nutritionist at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which funded the study.

The girls' decline in physical activity was affected by lower levels of parental education, heavier weight, smoking and pregnancy. Girls with better-educated parents may be better informed and more encouraged to exercise, the researchers suggested.

The study followed 1,213 black girls and 1,166 white girls from the Washington, D.C., Cincinnati and San Francisco areas for 10 years, beginning at age 9 or 10.

Through a series of questionnaires and interviews, the researchers recorded after-school exercise such as sports, bicycling, dancing and gymnastics.

By the end of the study, the activity score for the whole group dropped 83 percent.

Kimm said preliminary data from the group shows that obesity doubled even though no significant increase in calorie consumption was reported.

"We have to surmise that physical activity appears to be a major suspect," she said.

Dr. Paul D. Thompson of Hartford Hospital said the study confirms suspicions that teenage girls in particular are getting little exercise.

In another study in the journal, researchers found that women who sit for less than four hours a day have a lower risk of heart disease than those who sit for prolonged periods.

The large study of 73,734 postmenopausal women also confirmed earlier research that showed brisk walking is just as effective as more vigorous exercise such as aerobics, jogging or tennis in reducing the risk of heart disease.

Women in the study who spent 2.5 hours a week walking or exercising vigorously cut their risk by about 30 percent.

"The good news is that 30 minutes, five days a week will do it, will confer tremendous cardiovascular benefits. This is an amount of exercise that is feasible and accessible for nearly everyone," said one of the researchers, Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Harvard's Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Thompson said: "The take-home message for physicians or any health professional dealing with patients is to encourage them to do something. And walking was a good physical activity."

Great. Now they'll be fat before they are even freshmen.

LOL!!!!! This was the second funniest post I have read today! OP, you are crazy! :D

See, this is what gets me, I always hear a lot of
teenage girls bitching about their weight, yet they refuse to get off their lazy a$$es and exercise. :rolleyes: :mad:

LOL! Yeah. But the main ones obsessed with their weight are the super-skinny ones (i.e. that chick from Real World).

This thread is funny though.

Our whole society is getting fater. Of course these girls only mirror that. ALl that computer use and Nintendo playing without the moderation of exercise, and if you add smoking to the mix is bound to have a drastic effect on weight.

I wonder why they didn't study guys. They said it was because boys are usually more active in sports. There are alot of girls that play sports these days too. I guess guys do play sports out side any organized school team.

I think you're right. Many boys, regardless of age, often do "pickup" games outside of the organized sports realm. My nephew was constantly moving -- as a result, he was in great shape when he was a teenager.

Of course, teenage guys are getting bigger too, but it seems to be us women who have it worse. I know that when I was in high school (which, OK, was ten years ago), girls either were or weren't athletes. If you weren't in a varsity sport, you didn't run for fun, play pickup basketball, or hike. But the guys who didn't do sports were frequently out playing basketball or skateboarding at lunch. And the pathetic amount of PE required at my school didn't keep you in shape, and taking extra PE when you could be in academic classes wasn't a great idea for the serious-minded students.

And if you're larger in high school, you're going to be bigger in college. As America gets larger, I am amazed at the sororities who still managed to be composed of tiny women!

Oh, do they still do that? I always did that in a bar!

Just kidding, I know what you really were saying -- it just struck me as kinda' funny.

I need to get to gym. Not Jim, he'll just wanna get beer.

Speaking of obesity.... (NOT DISSING OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE AT ALL, just telling you about an incident):

I gave a rather obese girl a ride about a week ago and I noticed as she got out of the car that she had literally split the seams of the leather seat!

There's now a freaking four inch long SPLIT down the seat! Sorry, I know the leather was intact before she got in and absolutely was not after she got out.

There was no way I could politely say, "Erm, excuse me, but you happened to be so heavy that my seat couldn't quite handle your weight and therefore split at the seam... see, yeah, right there... that huge gap where the stuffing is coming out... could you possibly apologize or better yet, give me like a hundred bucks to get it fixed since you BROKE it?"

Therefore, I adhered to the rule of, If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all. So I didn't. But I'm slightly pissed.

:(

XOXO,
Annie.

Shark I would be pissed to, guess next time just don't give people rides.