Does exercise help you keep weight off?
Yes, and that’s where exercise does its best work. People who keep weight off tend to be very active. Members of the US National Weight Control Registry, who lost an average of 33 kg (73 pounds) and kept it off for more than 5 years, reported about an hour of activity a day. No good trial has tested it directly yet.
Most people judge exercise by the scale while they’re losing, see it barely move and quit. Then the weight comes back, and they blame the diet. That gets the roles backwards. Food does most of the work on the way down, and exercise does a lot of the work of staying there.
What we’d do
Keep moving once the loss slows down, and treat that as the start of the exercise’s real job. Build toward about an hour of brisk movement on most days, in any pieces, plus two strength sessions a week to hold on to muscle. Weigh yourself regularly, since that’s one of the habits registry members share.
Losing weight is like rolling a ball up a hill, and keeping it off is holding it there. Food does most of the pushing on the way up, and exercise does a big share of the holding.
What do people who keep it off do?
The National Weight Control Registry tracks people who have lost a lot of weight and kept it off. In a 2005 review, Rena Wing and Suzanne Phelan described what its members do:
73 lblost, on average
33 kg, kept off for more than 5 years by registry members.
1 hourof activity a day
About what members reported, along with a lower-calorie diet and weighing themselves often.
About 20%keep it off
Of people with overweight, the share who lose at least 10% of their weight and keep it off for a year.
They also found that keeping it off gets easier with time. Once people had held their weight for 2 to 5 years, their chances of keeping it off for longer went up a lot. The registry is made up of people who signed up because they succeeded, and they report their own activity, so it shows what successful people do, and can’t prove the hour of activity is what kept the weight off.
What do the guidelines say?
The American College of Sports Medicine’s 2009 review found that after weight loss, people who did more than 250 minutes a week of moderate activity were better at keeping it off, in studies that followed people over time. It also said that no well-designed trial has tested whether exercise prevents regain. We’d still bet on the hour, since the studies that followed people over time all point the same way.
Why lift too?
Muscle is what you want to keep while the fat goes. In six trials of older adults with obesity who dieted for 12 to 24 weeks, the ones who also lifted three times a week kept almost all their lean mass, preventing 93.5% of the loss that dieting alone caused. Two strength sessions a week is the US guideline for everyone, and it’s easy to hold on to through a maintenance phase.
bodyfat.guide covers why the body pushes back after a loss in why do most people regain weight? and how to hold the new weight in keep it off. To see whether your week reaches the 250 minutes, put it into Your week.
4 sources
- Wing RR and Phelan S, Long-term weight loss maintenance, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2005europepmc.org
- Donnelly JE and others, American College of Sports Medicine position stand: appropriate physical activity intervention strategies for weight loss and prevention of weight regain for adults, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 2009europepmc.org
- Careau V and others, Energy compensation and adiposity in humans, Current Biology, 2021europepmc.org
- Sardeli AV and others, Resistance training prevents muscle loss induced by caloric restriction in obese elderly individuals: a systematic review and meta-analysis, Nutrients, 2018europepmc.org
