The prevention and treatment of obesity remain major public health challenges. Obesity management guidelines worldwide have identified weight loss as the primary target to determine treatment success as weight loss is associated with benefit across a wide range of health outcomes (1). How much weight loss is required for health benefit, however, continues to be the source of uncertainly and debate. In recent years, it has been suggested that “clinically significant weight loss” should be set at a threshold of 5% (2). Although it is true that for most health outcomes a 5% weight loss is associated with benefit, it is also true that for adults who adopt and sustain physical activity combined with a healthful diet, significant health benefits are achieved in association with very modest (less than 3%) or even no weight loss (3). Strong evidence in support of this notion comes from the Diabetes Prevention Study wherein participants who increased physical activity for about 150 min per week but did not achieve “clinically significant weight loss,” reduced diabetes incidence by 44% (4), observations consistent with the findings of the Diabetes Prevention Program (5). The findings from these and numerous randomized controlled trials (3) consistently report that physical activity is associated with benefit for many health outcomes with or without weight loss. In the present issue of Obesity, Swift et al. (6) report the findings of an ancillary study designed to determine the effects of exercise amount on body weight and selected cardiometabolic risk factors. A total of 330 women performed 6 months of aerobic exercise at 4 kcal per kilogram per week (4KKW), 8KKW, or 12 KKW (50%, 100%, and 150% of recommended levels, respectively). The authors distinguished the participants by the weight loss they achieved; those who lost between 3% and 4.9% were classified as having modest weight loss (MWL), whereas those who lost at least 5% were identified as having achieved clinically significant weight loss (CWL). The findings of this rigorously controlled study suggest that exercise performed for about 150 min or less per week may not be sufficient to achieve a 5% weight loss for many adults over a relatively short duration. Given the rather low levels of exercise-induced energy expenditure in this trial, the findings are not surprising and confirm the positive dose-response relationship between exercise and weight loss (7). In fact, 300 min of weekly exercise is recommended if weight loss in the order of 5% to 10% is desired (8). An extremely important observation in this study was that the statistically significant reductions in insulin resistance observed within the MWL group was not different from the CWL group, thus confirming that improvements in insulin action are achievable in association with very modest exercise-induced weight loss. That the authors did not observe significant reductions in other risk factors regardless of weight loss is likely explained by the remarkably normal cardiometabolic risk profile prior to intervention. It is suggested that the 5% clinically significant weight loss threshold for effective obesity management is “here to stay” (2). While the veracity of this contention will continue to be the source of debate among academics, its interpretation for many practitioners and obese adults may well be that, for effective obesity management, substantial weight loss is required for benefit. This would be an unfortunate interpretation and one that may lead obese adults who are unable to make the major changes in behavior required to sustain a 5% weight loss in today's environment to become frustrated and consequently discontinue physical activity and/or the consumption of a healthy diet. Given that the health benefits of lifestyle-induced weight loss typically occur in a dose-response manner (1, 3-5), the need to establish “clinically significant” weight loss targets, a strategy with little evidence of success, seems unnecessary. A revised approach would be to target the causal behaviors—physical activity combined with a healthful diet. Given the plethora of health benefits associated with increasing physical activity regardless of weight loss, and that sustained weight loss is unlikely to occur without increasing physical activity (8), changing the focus for effective obesity management from the bathroom scale to the adoption of healthy behaviors is an idea worth considering.