Diet plus exercise the best

A new study from Obesity has found that when it comes to losing weight and body fat, diet and exercise are most effective when done together as compared to either strategy alone. The majority of women in the study who both improved their diet and exercised regularly shed an average of nearly 11 percent of their starting weight, which exceeded the study's goal of a 10 percent or more reduction in body weight.

The year-long intervention involved 439 overweight-to-obese, sedentary, postmenopausal Seattle-area women, ages 50 to 75, who were randomly assigned to one of four groups: exercise only (goal: 45 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous aerobic exercise per day, five days a week); diet only (goal: 1,200 to 2,000 calories a day, depending on starting weight, and fewer than 30 percent of daily calories from fat); exercise and diet (with the same goals as above); and no intervention.

At the end of the intervention, the researchers found that the women in the exercise-only group lost, on average, 2.4 percent of their starting weight (with a mean weight loss of 4.4 pounds) as compared to an average weight loss of 8.5 percent among women in the diet-only group (with a mean weight loss of 15.8 pounds). The greatest weight loss was achieved by women who both changed their diet and exercised regularly; these women shed an average of 10.8 percent of their starting weight (with a mean weight loss of 19.8 pounds).