Health-and-Fitness online information.

For most of her adult life, Phyllis Ingram of Barto, PA, was too busy raising her two children to even think about her own health. Consequently, by the time she turned 52, she carted an unhealthy 225 pounds around on her 5'6" frame. Just walking up the 12 steps in her house left her gasping for breath, and she suffered daily with a multitude of annoying aches and pains.

Today, Ms. Ingram is 50 pounds lighter and her body is rock solid with muscle. She rides hundreds of miles a year on her road bike (sometimes nearly 100 miles in a weekend) and is training for a cross-country bike ride sometime next year.

Ms. Ingram is a convert, convinced of the power of exercise and physical activity, determined never to return to the world of the unfit. "I find I get grouchy if I don't get my exercise in," she says.

Unfortunately, she's the exception. More than 60 percent of women don't get the recommended amount of physical activity, and one in four women aren't physically active at all. (1) That number jumps in women over 55--nearly 40 percent of whom say they get no leisure-time physical activity.