Diet, Exercise, or Both in Obese Older Adults

Because obesity predisposes older adults to disability, we often advise such patients to diet and get exercise. To determine the relative contributions of these two interventions, researchers randomized 107 obese older adults (age, ≥65; body-mass index, >30 kg/m²) with mild-to-moderate frailty to receive a diet intervention, exercise intervention, both, or neither. The diet intervention consisted of individualized weight-loss diets targeted to 10% reduction of baseline weight and weekly group sessions with dieticians. The exercise intervention consisted of 90-minute, thrice-weekly group sessions that included aerobic exercise and resistance training.

At 1 year, mean weight loss was about 9 kg in both the diet-only and diet–exercise groups bu…