Summary
Fewer than half of adults with diabetes meet current guidelines recommending at least 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per week, spread over three or more days.1 Underscoring the importance of any physical activity, a recent study found that both regular physical activity patterns and the “weekend warrior” approach (condensing physical activity into one or two sessions per week) were associated with lower cardiovascular mortality for people with diabetes.2
The nationwide prospective cohort study of 51,650 U.S. adults with self-reported diabetes examined activity patterns to determine whether they confer differential mortality benefits.2 Physical activity categories included inactive (0 min/week), insufficiently active (< 150 min/week), weekend warrior (≥ 150 min/week condensed into one to two sessions), and regularly active (≥ 150 min/week across three or more sessions).
Study findings included 21% and 17% lower risks for all-cause mortality and 33% and 19% lower risks of cardiovascular mortality, respectively, for weekend warrior and regularly active participants compared with those who were physically inactive.
Over a median 9.5-year follow-up, insufficiently active participants also experienced a reduction in all-cause mortality compared with inactive participants, regardless of whether their activity was distributed across multiple days or concentrated into one or two sessions per week.
Sources
1. Egan AM, Mahmood WA, Fenton R, et al. Barriers to exercise in obese patients with type 2 diabetes. QJM. 2013;106(7):635-638. doi:10.1093/qjmed/hct075.
2. Wu Z, Sheng C, Guo Z, et al. Association of Weekend Warrior and Other Physical Activity Patterns With Mortality Among Adults With Diabetes: A Cohort Study. Ann Intern Med. 2025;178(9):1279-1286. doi:10.7326/ANNALS-25-00640.
This summary was created with assistance from generative artificial intelligence (Microsoft Copilot, 2025)
Featured Authors
Colin Crowe, MD
Case Western Reserve University