Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Aug 19:349:g4887.
doi: 10.1136/bmj.g4887.

Associations between active commuting, body fat, and body mass index: population based, cross sectional study in the United Kingdom

Ellen Flint  1 , Steven Cummins  2 , Amanda Sacker  3
Affiliations

Associations between active commuting, body fat, and body mass index: population based, cross sectional study in the United Kingdom

Ellen Flint et al. BMJ. .

Erratum in

Abstract

Objective: To determine if promotion of active modes of travel is an effective strategy for obesity prevention by assessing whether active commuting (walking or cycling for all or part of the journey to work) is independently associated with objectively assessed biological markers of obesity.

Design: Cross sectional study of data from the wave 2 Health Assessment subsample of Understanding Society, the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). The exposure of interest, commuting mode, was self reported and categorised as three categories: private transport, public transport, and active transport.

Participants: The analytic samples (7534 for body mass index (BMI) analysis, 7424 for percentage body fat analysis) were drawn from the representative subsample of wave 2 respondents of UKHLS who provided health assessment data (n = 15,777).

Main outcome measures: Body mass index (weight (kg)/height (m)(2)); percentage body fat (measured by electrical impedance).

Results: Results from multivariate linear regression analyses suggest that, compared with using private transport, commuting by public or active transport modes was significantly and independently predictive of lower BMI for both men and women. In fully adjusted models, men who commuted via public or active modes had BMI scores 1.10 (95% CI 0.53 to 1.67) and 0.97 (0.40 to 1.55) points lower, respectively, than those who used private transport. Women who commuted via public or active modes had BMI scores 0.72 (0.06 to 1.37) and 0.87 (0.36 to 0.87) points lower, respectively, than those using private transport. Results for percentage body fat were similar in terms of magnitude, significance, and direction of effects.

Conclusions: Men and women who commuted to work by active and public modes of transport had significantly lower BMI and percentage body fat than their counterparts who used private transport. These associations were not attenuated by adjustment for a range of hypothesised confounding factors.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: All authors have completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form at www.icmje.org/coi_disclosure.pdf (available on request from the corresponding author) and declare: no support from any organisation for the submitted work; no financial relationships with any organisations that might have an interest in the submitted work in the previous three years; no other relationships or activities that could appear to have influenced the submitted work.

Comment in

References

    1. Department of Health. At least five a week: evidence on the impact of physical activity and its relationship to health. DoH, 2004.
    1. Department of Health. Start active, stay active: a report on physical activity from the four home countries’ chief medical officers. DoH, 2011.
    1. Pucher J, Buehler R, Bassett D, Dannenberg A. Walking and cycling to health: a comparative analysis of city, state, and international data. Am J Public Health 2010;100:986-1992. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bassett D, Pucher J, Buehler R, Thompson D, Crouter S. Walking, cycling and obesity rates in Europe, North America, and Australia. J Phys Act Health 2008;5:795-814. - PubMed
    1. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Walking and cycling: local measures to promote walking and cycling as forms of travel or recreation (public health guidance 41). NICE, 2012. www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ph41.

Publication types