"Lifestyle" interventions for promoting physical activity: a kilocalorie expenditure-based home feasibility study

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American College of Sports Medicine in cooperation with the President's Council of Physical Fitness and Sports recommended short periods of daily kilocalorie (calorie) expenditure with moderate-intensity physical activities to complement the currently existing recommendations. In this study the feasibility (adherence and safety) of employing calorie expenditure as the basis for prescribing a home-based walking program to healthy, community-dwelling men and women was examined. This was a 16-week pretest-posttest feasibility study of a home-based calorie-expenditure walking program conducted in an outpatient clinic in an academic medical center. Participants included 20 healthy, elderly, community-dwelling men and women. A 16-week home-based walking program was individually prescribed as a weekly amount of calorie expenditure increasing from an initial 300 calories per week to 1,200 calories per week (approximately 30 minutes of walking daily) during the final 6 weeks of the study. Adherence to the program was recorded individually in a diary (kept daily and reviewed at each visit), body weight, and walking pace. All but one participant were able to complete this 16-week program (95 percent adherence). That a calorie-based approach to promote physical activity among the elderly has a high adherence rate is suggested by these findings. Additional studies are necessary to define the potential role for this approach in promoting physical activity and improving health outcomes among the elderly.