ABSTRACT

Aim: Overweight and obesity cause grave health problems, creating negative effects particularly on blood lipids. Despite it is realized that exercises induce positive effects on obesity and dyslipidemia, it is notedly important to know in detail the effects of different types of exercise applications and the duration, intensity, and frequency of exercises. Therefore, this study was designed in order to examine the changes on blood lipids and body composition caused by aerobic exercises applied at moderate intensity for sixty minutes, excluding warm-up and cooling periods for each exercise, 3 days a week for eight weeks total on overweight and obese first degree females.

Methods: 41 overweight and obese females with ages 22 to 48 participated voluntarily in the study. Two different groups, 21 persons for exercise group and 20 for control group, were made up from the volunteers. 60-minute of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise program was applied for a duration of 3 days a week for eight weeks to the exercise group. The values in terms of height, weight, BMI, body fat percentage, visceral fat rating, hip circumference, waist circumference, triglyceride, total cholesterol, HDL, and LDL were collected from all volunteers prior to and after the eight-week exercise program.

Results: Significant decrease was observed, in weight (p <0.001), BMI (p <0.001), body fat percentage (p <0.05), hip circumference (p <0.001), and waist circumference (p <0.001) of the exercise group. Despite the levels of visceral fat rating, triglyceride, total cholesterol, and LDL decreased and HDL level increased in the exercise group, this difference was not statistically significant (p> 0.05).

Conclusions: It was observed thereby that the scope of the exercise program was well enough to form significant changes on the body composition of the volunteers participated in the study, but it didn’t induce sufficient effect on blood lipids.

Keywords: Exercise, blood lipids, obesity, overweight