A collaborative study involving researchers from Imperial College and Iran has confirmed the benefits of aerobic exercise for overweight and obese adults.
The research highlights a clear dose-response relationship between exercise duration and reductions in body weight, waist circumference, and body fat percentage.
These findings provide strong evidence to support existing exercise guidelines for weight management.
Obesity rates have skyrocketed over the past 45 years, with more than half of adults worldwide now classified as overweight or obese.
According to the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Study, obesity is one of the highest risk factors for death-related diseases.
Addressing this issue is critical for improving public health outcomes, and aerobic exercise is considered a cornerstone of weight management strategies.
Current recommendations suggest a minimum of 150 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise per week for meaningful weight loss.
While these guidelines are backed by individual trials, the researchers aimed to strengthen the evidence by conducting a large-scale meta-analysis to better understand the relationship between exercise duration and weight-related outcomes.
Published in JAMA Network Open, the study analyzed 116 randomized clinical trials involving 6,880 participants with overweight or obesity.
These trials, each lasting at least eight weeks, focused on supervised aerobic exercise programs for adults. Most participants were women (61%), and their average age was 46 years.
The findings revealed a clear pattern: as aerobic exercise duration increased, body weight, waist circumference, and body fat percentage decreased.
For every additional 30 minutes of exercise per week, participants experienced reductions of 0.52 kilograms in body weight, 0.56 centimeters in waist circumference, and 0.37% in body fat percentage.
Clinically significant improvements were observed at the recommended 150 minutes of exercise per week, which led to reductions of 2.79 kilograms in weight, 3.26 centimeters in waist circumference, and 2.08% in body fat percentage.
Even greater benefits were seen at 300 minutes of weekly exercise, with reductions of 4.19 kilograms in weight, 4.12 centimeters in waist circumference, and 1.78% in body fat percentage.
The study also highlighted the linear nature of these effects, meaning that the more aerobic exercise participants performed, the greater the reductions in these measures.
This reinforces the importance of regular physical activity as a key factor in managing obesity and improving overall health.
These findings strongly support existing guidelines recommending at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise per week for noticeable improvements in weight, waist size, and body fat.
They also suggest that increasing exercise duration beyond this threshold can lead to even greater benefits, making aerobic exercise an essential tool for those aiming to combat obesity and its associated health risks.
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The research findings can be found in JAMA Network Open.
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