New Study: Once-a-Week Brisk Interval Walking Can Help Reduce Waist Size

A new study from Hong Kong supports brisk interval walking as a way to reduce waist size, offering a practical exercise strategy for time-poor individuals. Between 2021 and 2024, a group of 315 overweight adults were placed into three groups: Interval treadmill session: once per week Interval treadmill session: three times per week Control group. The control group received support on health education, while both walking groups completed a total of 75 minutes exercising. One group took on the full 75 minutes in a single session, while the other group split this into three sessions across the week. Each of the working groups took on a warmup, including bodyweight squats and lunges, followed by a high-intensity interval (HIIT) program lasting 16 weeks. The walks were treadmill based, and the level of difficulty increased as the program continued, maintaining 85 to 95% of peak heart rate. Researchers chose the well-established 4x minute HIIT protocol, with 3 minutes of recovery time between each effort. After 16-weeks, both walking groups lost a similar amount of weight, despite the different number of sessions. The three-times per week group lost 1.3 kilograms of fat on average, while the once per week group lost 700 grams. Both groups also lost around an inch from their waist size, but importantly, neither group was asked to restrict calories, meaning that exercise played the main role in the improved body composition. The fact that longer, single sessions can provide benefits close to a greater number of workouts provides further proof that a 'Weekend Warrior' lifestyle is a sensible way to stay in shape when access to exercise is limited. While the experiment used the treadmill, there's nothing to stop individuals from getting outdoors and enjoying fresh air. 'While thrice-weekly interval training remains a commonly recommended approach for the therapeutic management of excess adiposity, The authors' findings show that once-weekly interval training offers similar benefits and represents a practical exercise strategy,' said Professor Siu, who helped put the study together. 'For many adults with central obesity who struggle to balance work, study, family and other commitments, time constraints are a significant barrier to regular exercise.'