A recent study on the effect of exercise on quality of life, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that among sedentary postmenopausal women with high blood pressure, exercise significantly improved quality of life. The study also found that the improvement was dose dependent, meaning that the more the women exercised the greater their improvement in quality of life. Furthermore, the study found that the improvement was independent of weight change. So whether or not you end up losing weight, exercising is still an effective method of improving your quality of life. The study examined eight aspects of quality of life including measures of both physical and mental health such as bodily pain, vitality, and mental health. We would all like to improve our quality of life and exercising an affordable and even enjoyable way of doing so. Current physical activity recommendations advise at least 8 kilocalories/kilogram/week of exercise. For a person weighing 155 lbs, this translates into a little less than two and half hours of walking at a moderate pace per week, or about 20 minutes a day.