Evidence library · Sticking with it

Does high-intensity intervals affect sticking with it in menopause? What 5 studies found

Studies of high-intensity intervals in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women that measured sticking with it. 3 reported an improvement and 1 found no difference against the comparison group.

  1. Obese postmenopausal women did 16 weeks of HIIT or endurance exercise with a calorie restricted diet, and the HIIT group lost twice as much weight and had higher adherence than the endurance group.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 11 women · 16 weeks · 2018PostmenopausalCited 23 timesPubMed

  2. Postmenopausal overweight women at high breast cancer risk did 12 weeks of HIIT, moderate exercise, or usual care; HIIT was feasible and improved fitness more than usual care, with no weight difference.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 44 women · 12 weeks · 2019PostmenopausalCited 11 timesPubMed

  3. 12 postmenopausal women with overweight or obesity did single sessions of continuous or interval cycling, and researchers found no difference in post-exercise fat burning or energy balance between the two exercise types.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 12 women · 2020PostmenopausalCited 9 timesPubMed

  4. An 8-week home-based interval training program, with or without a Mediterranean diet, reduced weight, BMI and waist circumference in inactive postmenopausal women with overweight or obesity versus controls.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 30 women · 8 weeks · 2025PostmenopausalCited 3 timesPubMed

  5. 22 menopausal women completed a 12-week workplace exercise programme of body conditioning, Zumba Gold, Pilates and HIIT, with authors reporting favourable changes in body fat, fitness, menopause symptoms and mental health.

    Direction not statedBefore-and-after study · 22 women · 12 weeks · 2026Midlife womenPubMed

How to read this. Each line is one study, summarised in plain language from its PubMed abstract, with the authors' own sentence underneath on the study page. A count of studies is not a verdict: trials differ in size, length and quality, and a result in one group of women may not hold in another. Nothing here is medical advice.

Summaries are generated, then checked by machine against the abstract they came from; any summary that could not be matched word for word was left out. Our clinical lead is reviewing the summaries topic by topic, and this note will change when that is done. Corpus last refreshed 2026-11-03. Spotted a mistake? Tell us and we will fix the summary or remove the study.

Other exercise types and sticking with it