8,500 Steps a Day May Help Prevent Weight Regain After Weight Loss

Reaching a weight-loss goal is worth celebrating.

For many people, however, the greater difficulty comes afterwards: preventing the weight from returning over the long term.

A new systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials has identified a potential benchmark for people seeking to avoid weight regain: taking 8,500 steps each day while losing weight, then sustaining that activity level.

Research conducted by scientists in Italy and Lebanon found that roughly this daily number of steps was linked both to greater weight loss and to remaining nearer that reduced weight in the following months.

"The most important – and greatest – challenge when treating obesity is preventing weight regain," says biomedical scientist Marwan El Ghoch, from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in Italy.

"Around 80 percent of overweight or obese people who initially lose weight tend to put some or all of it back on again within three to five years. The identification of a strategy that would solve this problem and help people maintain their new weight would be of huge clinical value."

Weight loss and daily steps in the review

Overall, the researchers examined 18 earlier randomised controlled trials (RCTs) involving people classified as overweight or obese. Data from 14 of these RCTs were included in an additional meta-analysis.

That meta-analysis combined findings from 3,758 adults, whose average age was 53 and who were monitored for an average of 18 months.

Every previous RCT included in the new analysis had two participant groups.

One group followed a professionally guided lifestyle-modification programme involving weight-loss measures, namely a healthier diet and more physical activity. The control group maintained its usual lifestyle.

The team separated the findings into two periods: a weight-loss phase, when participants were actively seeking to reduce their weight, and a weight-maintenance phase. During the latter, dietary limits were less strict and the objective was to prevent regained weight rather than achieve further loss.

During the weight-loss phase, people taking part in the expert-led lifestyle-modification programmes lost 4.4 percent of their total body weight, significantly more than those in the control group.

In addition, following the weight-maintenance phase, the lifestyle-modification group had kept off about 3.3 percent of their total body weight. This was also significantly more than the control group.

Why 8,500 steps a day stood out

What explained this gap?

The step-count figures were particularly striking.

At the outset, participants in both groups recorded broadly similar daily step totals: an average of 7,280 in the lifestyle-modification group and 7,180 in the control group.

By the end of the weight-loss phase, those in the lifestyle-modification group had increased their average to as many as 8,454 steps a day. At the end of the weight-maintenance phase, they were still averaging 8,241 daily steps.

In comparison, the control group did not make a significant increase in its step count, averaging 7,486 steps per day at the conclusion of the weight-maintenance phase.

This group likewise experienced no significant weight loss across the study period.

Although the evidence does not conclusively establish that step counts caused the outcome, RCTs are regarded as the gold standard of evidence. The results therefore indicate that walking made a difference, and that 8,500 steps daily is a sensible goal.

"Participants should be always encouraged to increase their step count to approximately 8,500 a day during the weight loss phase and sustain this level of physical activity during the maintenance phase to help prevent them from regaining weight," says El Ghoch.

"Increasing the number of steps walked to 8,500 each day is a simple and affordable strategy to prevent weight regain."

Maintaining weight loss after dieting

Steps appeared to be most important at a later stage.

The relationship between daily steps and weight loss was stronger in the weight-maintenance phase, implying that everyday activity made its greatest difference after the initial reduction in weight.

The link between daily step totals and health benefits is already well established.

This review offers a more precise message for people who have lost weight: reaching activity goals continues to matter once dieting has ended, and keeping weight off may demand fewer steps than is commonly thought.

"The proposed threshold (8,500 steps/day) should be considered as hypothesis-generating rather than prescriptive," write the researchers in their published paper.

"Further studies using predefined thresholds or dose–response analysis are needed to establish clinically meaningful step targets."

At present, the result provides a practical takeaway.

The research was published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.