A new study presented at the European Congress on Obesity 2026, taking place in Istanbul, Turkey, from May 12–15, and published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, suggests that walking around 8,500 steps per day may help people maintain their weight after losing it.
Weight management programs often recommend increasing daily step counts. However, until now there has been limited evidence showing whether this actually helps people lose weight during dieting. It also remained unclear whether increasing daily steps supports long-term weight maintenance and what level of activity might be most effective.
Professor Marwan El Ghoch from the Department of Biomedical, Metabolic and Neural Sciences at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia noted that preventing weight regain remains one of the greatest challenges in obesity treatment.
According to him, around 80% of people with overweight or obesity who initially lose weight partially or completely regain it within three to five years. Finding effective strategies for long-term maintenance therefore has major clinical importance.
Researchers from Italy and Lebanon conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis. The study included 18 controlled trials, 14 of which — involving 3,758 participants with an average age of 53 and an average BMI of 31 kg/m² — were included in the meta-analysis. The data came from the UK, the United States, Australia, Japan, and several other countries.
The studies compared participants enrolled in lifestyle intervention programs (1,987 people) with a control group (1,771 people) that either followed dietary advice alone or received no intervention.
The programs included dietary recommendations alongside gradual increases in physical activity measured through daily step counts. On average, participants first underwent a weight-loss phase lasting about 7.9 months, followed by a maintenance phase lasting approximately 10.3 months.
At baseline, both groups had similar activity levels of around 7,200 steps per day. The control group showed little change over time. In contrast, the intervention group increased their activity to about 8,454 steps daily and achieved an average weight reduction of 4.39%, or roughly 4 kilograms.
During the maintenance phase, participants continued averaging around 8,241 steps per day and managed to keep off most of the lost weight, maintaining an average reduction of 3.28%, or about 3 kilograms.
The analysis showed that the key factor in preventing weight regain was increasing and maintaining daily step counts. At the same time, taking additional steps beyond this level was not associated with significantly greater weight loss during dieting, likely because calorie restriction plays the dominant role during the active weight-loss phase.
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