How much should you exercise to maintain your weight loss?
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After you lose weight, how much exercise do you need to keep it off?
80 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity (walking between 2.2 and 3.7 mph, playing softball, golf or table tennis) a day or 35 minutes of vigorous activity (jogging, active dancing, tennis) a day.
That's according to researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin at Madison who followed 33 women, ages 20-50, for one year after they had lost at least 26 pounds.
This amount of exercise -- the 80 minutes of moderate or 35 minutes of vigorous activity a day -- which the study found necessary for maintaining weight control is much higher than the half hour a day of moderate intensity activity generally recommended to promote health. The researchers suggest that, if you want to try it, the most practical approach is to alternate vigorous exercise one day, moderate the next.
But don't take these numbers as gospel. "It's a good study," Says John Foreyt, Ph.D., a leading obesity researcher at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "But it's one study. Many people are able to maintain their body weight with less exercise [than this]." While physical activity is a must to keep off weight, he says, those who maintain a weight loss often figure out for themselves how much they can eat and how long and hard they must exercise. It varies from person to person.
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