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DALLAS - By just lifting weights twice a week for an hour, women can battle the buildup of tummy fat that often takes hold with aging, a new study suggests.
And they didn't even diet.
The study focused on intra-abdominal fat, the deep fat that is the most unhealthy because it's linked with heart disease.
In the study, presented yesterday at an American Heart Association conference in Phoenix, 164 overweight and obese Minnesota women ages 24 to 44 were divided evenly into two groups.
One group participated in a two-year weight-training program, and the other was simply given a brochure recommending exercise of 30 minutes to an hour most days of the week. All were told not to change their diets.
Women who did the weight-training had only a 7 percent increase in intra-abdominal fat, compared to a 21 percent increase in the group given advice.
"I think we need to provide people with multiple possibilities, multiple roads to the same end. If this is what you're willing to do, I'll tell you what you can get out of it," said the study's lead author, Kathryn Schmitz, an epidemiologist at the University of Pennsylvania.
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