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- Effects of Weight Loss on Adipose Tissue Distribution
- Effect of Weight Loss on Intra-abdominal Obesity
Managing Cardiometabolic Risk
Effects of Weight Loss on Adipose Tissue Distribution
Effect of Weight Loss on Intra-abdominal Obesity
- 1Key Points (1 page)
- 2Weight loss and abdominal obesity (1 page)
- 3Exercise-induced weight loss and intra-abdominal fat reduction (2 pages)
- 4Diet-induced weight loss and intra-abdominal fat reduction (1 page)
- 5Is exercise or diet better at reducing intra-abdominal fat? (2 pages)
- 6Exercise without weight loss and intra-abdominal fat reduction (4 pages)
- 7References (1 page)
Is exercise or diet better at reducing intra-abdominal fat?
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Figure 1: 
Figure 1: Since weight loss generally causes a reduction in intra-abdominal fat, the interventions that produce the greatest weight loss will inevitably cause the greatest loss of intra-abdominal fat. Caloric restriction is better at inducing significant weight loss than exercise. This is supported by the degree of weight loss reported among diet versus exercise weight loss studies (5 to 18 kg versus 1 to 8 kg reduction, respectively). For example, some of the very low calorie diets prescribed limited patients’ caloric intake to only 800 kcal/day (31), which is a very large (2,000 kcal/day) energy deficit for an obese adult man. In order for that obese man to produce the same energy deficit and expend 2,000 kcal, he would require approximately 3 hours of daily, moderate-intensity exercise (17).
However, if the goal is moderate weight loss, exercise and diet are equally effective. Carefully controlled studies have shown that when reduction of caloric intake is equal to the calories expended through exercise, which creates an equivalent energy deficit, the weight loss is identical between strategies (17, 18).
Although diet and exercise may both lower body weight equally, the composition of the weight lost differs according to the strategy used (Figure 1). It has been shown repeatedly that for a given weight loss, exercisers lose more fat mass than dieters (17, 18, 24, 33). Exercise therefore seems to prevent or at least attenuate the loss of lean muscle mass that occurs during diet-induced weight loss (17, 18, 24, 33).
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