Eureka! Institutional Repository

Obesity is a multifactorial disease with increasing frequency and burden for societies worldwide. Obesity can be addressed through daily behavioral changes that involve energy intake and consumption. Concerning the latter, there is strong evidence that regular exercise contributes to body weight by losing fat, maintaining body weight, reducing fat and metabolic capacity in obesity. Appropriate exercise programs should ideally combine a large negative energy balance, long-term commitment, and beneficial effects on health and well-being. Endurance training seems to be the most effective in this respect, although resistance training and high-intensity training play separate roles in the effectiveness of exercise interventions. With weight recovery being so common, maintaining weight loss is probably the biggest challenge in successfully treating obesity. There is a strong correlation between higher levels of physical activity and greater maintenance of weight loss, based on the abundance of data from prospective observational studies and retrospective analyzes. However, proving the causal link between exercise and weight loss is difficult at present. Exercise has the potential to alleviate the effects of obesity on health, even if there is no weight loss. Overall, exercise is a necessary, but often underrated, tool in the management of obesity.