Exercise Is Key to Weight Loss and Maintenance

The National Institute of Health and the Centers for Disease Control now recommend 30 minutes per day of exercise on most days of the week, or 150 minutes per week. I have seen more than one study showing the importance of exercise in achieving and maintaining weight loss. But studies also show that the difficulty is not really in losing the weight--it’s in keeping it off for the long term. So how much exercise is necessary to help maintain weight loss?

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, Brown Medical School and Wake Forest University recruited 170 overweight or obese women who had signed up at a hospital-based weight-loss research center. These women were all between 21 and 45, were otherwise healthy and exercised less than three days per week, for 20 minutes or less at a time. (Arch Intern Med. 2008; 168(14):1550-1559)

Those women who began the 2-year study weighing less than 200 lbs. were prescribed a 1,200 calorie per day diet, while those who weighed more than 200 lbs. were prescribed a 1,500 calorie per day diet. All of the women were randomly assigned to one of four exercise programs:

Moderate intensity/moderate calorie-burning;
Moderate intensity/high calorie-burning;
Vigorous intensity/moderate calorie-burning; and
Vigorous intensity/high calorie-burning

The high calorie-burning groups were designed to burn about 2,000 calories each week via exercise, while the moderate calorie-burning groups were designed to expend about 1,000 calories per week. The participants used their heart rate and their own perception of exertion to define whether an exercise was moderate- or high-intensity.

All of the women lost weight in the first 6 months, then gained some weight back every 6 months. After the 24 months of the study, however, those women who exercised vigorously and burned over 2,000 calories per week (the high intensity/high calorie-burning group) lost the most initially and regained the least. At the 6-month mark, those women had lost about 21 lbs. At the 24-month mark, they had maintained the loss of about 13 lbs. and had only gained back 8 lbs.

The women assigned to the moderate-intensity and moderate calorie-burning group lost 18 lbs. and kept off slightly over 10 lbs. They’d gained back a similar 8 lbs.

When the scientists interviewed those few women who actually maintained their loss of 10 percent of their body weight, they found that these women had actually performed an average of 68 minutes of exercise per day, five days per week. That’s over twice as much as the CDC recommend for maintaining weight loss!

Make your health a priority in your life by making exercise a priority. Schedule that time–don’t just do it “when I have a minute.” If you have kids, make exercise a family affair by walking or bicycling together–or at the same time. One mother I know takes her kids to soccer in the afternoons and uses that time to walk around the high-school track. Whatever you do, do something you like, and do it consistently.

Timothy S. Harlan, M.D., a.k.a. Dr. Gourmet
Drgourmet.com