Walk or Bicycle to Your Work to Stay Fit and Lean: Study

Working people who use transport or a bicycle are leaner than those who commute by car daily, finds a study.

A new survey by the University College London and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine recorded body weight of over 15,000 people who used different modes of transport to get to work every day. It was observed the male and female participants' BMI levels were 28 and 27, respectively. According to the National Health Services in the U.K. adults with BMI ranging between 25 to 30 are overweight.

Men who either relied on buses to travel to work weighed at least three kilograms lesser than those who drove while women who walked or used public transport had 0.7 points lesser BMI scores.

"Those who used active and public transport modes had a lower BMI and percentage body fat compared with those who used private transport," write the authors in the study, reports the Daily Mail.

"A key finding from this study is that the effects observed for public transport were very similar in size and significance to those for walking or cycling to work. This finding may have important implications for transport and health policy, as over the past decade the proportion of commuters who walk or cycle to work has remained stubbornly low outside major cities in the UK.," they add.

The study results emphasize on the need to improve and develop the condition of public transport system to prevent diseases and illnesses resulting from sedentary behaviors and physical inactivity.

In the U.S., conditions like obesity resulting from having too much body weight and fat affects 78.6 million adults. The condition is the leading and preventable cause of serious health issues like heart diseases, stroke, diabetes and cancer. The data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests, during 2008 the annual medical expenditure on obesity accounted for $147 billion.

More information is available online in the British Medical Journal.