INTRODUCTION: Brazilian studies on physical activity practice are scarce, especially in postpartum women. OBJECTIVE: To investigate factors associated with the alterations in the physical activity practice in leisure (LPA) in postpartum women. METHODS: Four hundred and seventy-eight women, age range of 15-45 were recruited and followed for nine months postpartum in a prospective study with four follow ups (15 days; 2; 6 and 9 months). The LPA was defined as a dependent variable and measured through a score. The designing of scores was based on the application of a validated questionnaire, which includes five questions concerning physical activity at work and six concerning LPA. The main co-variables investigated were skin color; age; total family income; parity and type. The data were analyzed using models of longitudinal linear regression with mixed effects. RESULTS: It was observed that 82.4% of the women practiced some degree of physical activity in postpartum leisure. The highest means of score for LPA at the nine months postpartum were observed among mixed color (2.41), older than 30 years (2.44) and with three children or more (2.44) women. The factors which remained associated with the most practice of LPA in the multivariate model were black and mixed skin color [(white/black beta= 0.0925; white/mixed beta = 0.1114)}; the oldest age (beta = 0.0157); the lowest total family income (beta = 0.0001); the highest parity (beta = 0.1708) and the kind of birth c-section (beta = -0.1058). CONCLUSIONS: Black and mixed, older and with higher parity women present the highest score of LPA in the postpartum period in the studied sample.
Physical activity in leisure; Exercise; Women; Postpartum; Longitudinal regression
