Becoming an adult leads to a decrease in physical activity

This transition, coming out of adolescence into adulthood, would be a delicate period, an important milestone for young people when they embark on a long study path or get a first job and enter the workforce. . These new statuses are not without consequence, they would lead to a decrease in physical activity and would therefore promote weight gain, according to two meta-analyzes.

Entering adulthood often corresponds to important transition phases: for example, leaving high school once your baccalaureate is in your pocket and engaging in graduate studies or to enter the vast world of work. But these changes would not be without effect on our health physical, warn researchers at the University of Cambridge (England), authors of a meta-analysis bringing together 19 longitudinal observational studies and collected from six data base different numbers.

The works analyzed focused on adiposity (excess fat in the body), diet and physical activity during these important life stages of young people aged 15 to 35 (first job, studies, birth of children, etc). The work was carried out at the Center for Research on Diet and Physical Activity (Cedar) in Cambridge.

A first job or long studies promote weight gain

First observation of the study published in Obesity Reviews : entering the world of work would lead to a drop in physical activity (moderate or intense) average of seven minutes per day. This decrease seems to be greater in men than in women (16.4 minutes versus 6.7 minutes per day). This change would be even more significant among students enrolled in university, for whom the overall level of daily physical activity decreases by 11.4 minutes. Several previous studies have, moreover, mentioned a weight gain increased at the end of high school or at the end of university studies.

" Children and teenagers live in a relatively protected environment, with a healthy diet and an incentive to exercise in schools, but this data suggests that pressures from university, employment and childcare lead to behavioral changes that are likely to be bad for health long-term Says Dr. Eleanor Winpenny, researcher at Cedar and the epidemiology unit at the University of Cambridge.

A second study carried out by the same team of researchers and also published in Obesity Reviews showed that becoming a parent could also greatly promote weight gain, especially in the mother (only one study looked at fathers), at a rate of 1.3 kg more than women without children for 5 to 6 years.

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