Research Review on Obesity Treatment: Weight loss v. increasing fitness & physical activity for reducing health risks and managing obesity.

Would shifting focus away from weight loss and towards the concept of increasing fitness and physical activity lower mortality rates?

Researchers Glenn A. Gaesser and Siddhartha S. Angadi analyze the concept of prescribing weight loss versus general physical fitness and activity when attempting to improve an individual’s health markers in their review titled “Obesity treatment: Weight loss versus increasing fitness and physical activity for reducing health risks.” They propose to approach obesity treatment through a “weight neutral strategy.”

Gaesser and Angadi propose several reasons as to why individuals should ignore the scale when attempting to lose weight:

(1) the mortality risk associated with obesity is largely attenuated or eliminated by moderate-to-high levels of cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) or physical activity (PA)

(2) most cardiometabolic risk markers associated with obesity can be improved with exercise training independent of weight loss and by a magnitude similar to that observed with weight-loss programs

(3) weight loss, even if intentional, is not consistently associated with lower mortality risk,

(4) increases in CRF or PA are consistently associated with greater reductions in mortality risk than is intentional weight loss, and

(5) weight cycling is associated with numerous adverse health outcomes including increased mortality. Adherence to PA may improve if health care professionals consider PA and CRF as essential vital signs and consistently emphasize to their patients the myriad benefits of PA and CRF in the absence of weight loss. [1]

Long gone are the days when the primary indicator of a person’s progress was the scale. Don’t get us wrong, losing weight is essential when an individual is fighting obesity. But, the primary focus should be improving one’s strength and conditioning. Losing weight will come with the work that we put in the gym. And, quite frankly, it’s much more fun to track our PR’s (personal records) than staring at that darn scale. 

[1] Gaesser, G. A., & Angadi, S. S. (2021). Obesity treatment: Weight loss versus increasing fitness and physical activity for reducing health risks. iScience, 102995.