This paper reports fitness and serum lipid outcomes of healthy, sedentary, overweight (mean BMI 32.1 kg/m2), 49-to-59-year-old women following 4 months of exercise-based intervention. One hundred fifty-seven women were randomly assigned to the following groups: health and fitness education combined with aerobic training (EX) (n = 68), health and fitness education only (ED) (n = 63), and control (CO) (n = 26). The following pre- and post-intervention assessments were performed: aerobic power, body composition, resting blood pressure and heart rate, muscular strength and endurance, flexibility, and serum lipids. We found significant improvement in abdominal muscular endurance in Ex, compared to ED and CO. We also found significant improvement in total serum cholesterol (TSC) and TSC/HDL-C ratio in ED compared to EX and CO suggesting that health and fitness education alone may improve the health of this population and contribute to self-directed exercise. Additionally, small fitness improvements observed in CO suggests that feedback from fitness tests may have promoted exercise habits. Both EX and ED groups increased their physical activity level. However, the lack of significant change in aerobic power and body composition by these groups suggests the need for longer exercise programs of increased intensity and duration, and for more sensitive instrumentation.

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