Physical activity and normal body mass of women aged 45-55

ABSTRACT The aim of this paper was to determine the degree to which physical activity in women aged 45-55 was an independent influence on body mass, as expressed by BMI, and to what degree it occurred in interaction with their level of education, financial status, and self-evaluated physical efficiency and health status. The material consisted of 212 female inhabitants of three cities in Poland, participating in physical exercises for at least one year. Statis-tical analysis of the collected data was carried out by the χ2 test, the H test, the Mann-Whitney U test, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). A statistically sig-nificant relation between the level of physical activity and BMI values was ob-served. Women with a medium and high level of physical activity were most often of normal body mass, whereas women with low activity were character-istically overweight. Analysis of the data revealed that the normal body mass of women aged 45-55 was influenced by: the level of physical activity, level of education, and financial status of respondents. Physical activity was an inde-pendent factor influencing normal body mass of women, irrespective of social features (i.e., education and financial status). KEY WORDS women’s life style, physical efficiency, health status, BM