Research
Energy balance
Higher levels of physical activity at the time of registry entry are associated with greater magnitude of weight loss maintained, although activity level does not predict the duration of maintenance.
While you don't need to exercise excessively to maintain weight, engaging in higher levels of activity (e.g., >3,500 kcal/week) is associated with having lost more weight initially. However, this does not mean you must keep exercising at that high level to *keep* the weight off; duration of maintenance was not linked to activity level.
GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Activity level on registry entry is related to the magnitude but not the duration of weight loss... Those subjects reporting very high levels of activity (3,500 + kcal/week) were maintaining on average a 4.2 kg greater weight loss than those reporting low levels of activity (<1,000 kcal/week) after adjustment for age and gender.
Why this rating
Large sample size, but self-reported data limits precision.
Source
Physical Activity Patterns in the National Weight Control Registry
Victoria A. Catenacci et al. · Obesity · 2008
DOI 10.1038/oby.2007.6
cohort · n=3683Cited 194×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Successful long-term weight loss maintenance is associated with high levels of physical activity (averaging ~2,621 kcal/week), but there is no single optimal amount of activity required, as successful maintainers exhibit wide variability in activity levels.Good
- Walking is the most common form of physical activity among successful weight loss maintainers, followed by resistance training, cycling, and running.Good
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