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The Maintain-Your-Weight Workout

Exercise to keep the pounds off

By John Casey
WebMD Weight Loss Clinic-Exclusive Feature

Reviewed by Kathleen M. Zelman, MPH, RD, LD

You've reached your goal weight. Your "skinny" clothes fit, and you're happy with the number you see on the scale every morning. So now it's safe to hang up your running shoes and cancel your gym membership -- right?

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Well, not if you want to keep those pounds off. In fact, some experts say exercise may be even more important for maintaining a weight loss than it is for dropping the pounds in the first place. So if you managed to lose weight without exercising, it's time to start.

As seasoned dieters know, the transition from weight loss to weight maintenance is a tricky one. So now is not the time to relax your vigilance.

"Weight maintenance over time means you're making lasting lifestyle changes," says Catherine Fitzgerald, RD, a dietitian for the University of Michigan Health System's weight-loss program. "Making real changes in lifestyle is really hard."

How Much Exercise Do You Need?

You already know that you need to keep up with your new, healthier eating habits after you've hit your goal -- perhaps with a little planned indulgence now and then. But do you have to do as much exercise to keep the weight off as you did to lose it?

"There's not a lot of data on exactly how much people need to exercise to keep weight off, but in general you need to use 2,500 to 2,800 calories per week," says certified strength and conditioning specialist Richard Weil, MEd, CDE, a WebMD Weight Loss Clinic consultant.

For most of us, that translates into "about one hour per day of moderate intensity physical activity," according to James Hill, PhD, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.

"Exercise becomes more important for keeping the weight off than for losing weight," Hill says. "You can create a large energy deficit by reducing food intake, but it is difficult to create a large energy deficit by exercise."

For example, he says, you can easily eat 1,000 fewer calories tomorrow than today, but it's very hard to burn 1,000 extra calories through exercise. Hill is one of the founders of the National Weight Control Registry, a long-term study of thousands of people who have lost a lot of weight and kept it off. He says that data from the registry show that plain old walking is the most common form of physical activity for successful maintainers.

Add Strength Training to the Mix

Walking is great as an aerobic exercise, but to improve your chances of keeping weight off, you'd be well advised to do resistance training as well, says Weil. Immediately after weight loss, weight training becomes especially important.

"Aerobic exercise burns more calories initially, but you lose a lot of muscle mass when you're dieting," says Weil. "You need to do weight training to replace that loss because muscle burns more calories" at rest than other tissues.

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