By Kate Devlin Medical Correspondent
Scientists found that women who worked out for 275 minutes a week lost almost 10 per cent of their body weight and kept it off for two years.
The Government currently recommends that people exercise for around half an hour a couple of times a week to maintain a healthy body weight.
But ministers have faced accusations that this level is too low and the new study suggests that much more activity is needed to aid weight loss.
More than one quarter of Britons are now defined a clinically obese, a percentage that is predicted to rise in coming decades because of our inactive lifestyles.
Researchers studied more than 200 overweight and obese women as they tried to lose weight over two years.
All the women were told to eat a diet of between 1,200 and 1,500 calories per day, and given different levels of physical activity to perform.
Although all the groups had lost an average of between 8 and 10 per cent of their body weight after six months, most could not keep the extra pounds off.
The almost 25 per cent of those who did maintain the weight loss over the two years worked out for around 275 minutes a week, burning around 2,000 calories, the findings published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal, show.
The study also showed that increased levels of exercise were linked to other behaviours that can lead to weight loss, such as eating less fat.
"This clarifies the amount of physical activity that should be targeted for achieving and sustaining this magnitude of weight loss, but also demonstrates the difficulty of sustaining this level of physical activity," according to John M. Jakicic, from the University of Pittsburgh, who led the study.
"Research is needed to improve long-term compliance with this targeted level of physical activity."
He added that the findings that those who worked out for the longest every week also tended to keep to other good dieting habits "suggests that physical activity does not function independently of these other behaviours."
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