Evidence library · Body fat and weight

Does stretching affect body fat and weight in menopause? What 7 studies found

Studies of stretching in perimenopausal and postmenopausal women that measured body fat and weight. 6 reported an improvement and 1 found no difference against the comparison group.

  1. Overweight postmenopausal women did aerobic exercise five days a week for a year, gaining fitness and losing weight, with oxidative stress markers decreasing most in those with the largest fitness gains.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 173 women · 52 weeks · 2010PostmenopausalCited 88 timesPubMed

  2. Postmenopausal women did 9 months of resistance training or stretching with ibuprofen or placebo; exercise did not change bone density but increased strength and reduced body fat versus stretching.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 90 women · 36 weeks · 2016PostmenopausalCited 22 timesPubMed

  3. Menopausal women aged 45 to 59 practiced Rusie Dutton traditional Thai exercise for 13 weeks and showed significant improvements in fitness, flexibility, blood pressure and quality of life versus controls.

    No difference foundRandomised trial · 50 women · 13 weeks · 2014Midlife womenCited 20 timesPubMed

  4. Postmenopausal women did resistance training with stretching twice weekly for 8 weeks and showed reduced body fat, increased fat-free mass, and improved physical and mental quality of life versus non-exercisers.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 38 women · 8 weeks · 2016PostmenopausalCited 11 timesPubMed

  5. In postmenopausal women, 12 months of step, weight training and flexibility exercise reduced fat mass and visceral fat gain and preserved skeletal muscle mass compared with controls.

    Reported an improvementRandomised trial · 169 women · 52 weeks · 2012PostmenopausalCited 6 timesPubMed

  6. Sedentary women aged 40 to 60 did a 26 week multicomponent exercise program; postmenopausal women showed greater blood pressure and waist reductions, premenopausal women showed greater lipid and glucose improvements.

    Reported an improvementControlled trial · 38 women · 26 weeks · 2025Midlife womenCited 3 timesPubMed

  7. This narrative review summarized medical literature finding that regular exercise in midlife and postmenopausal women is linked with reduced obesity, cancer, dementia, mood symptoms, and osteoporosis.

    Reported an improvementOther · 2015Midlife womenCited 56 timesPubMed

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 body fat and weight