Do Weighted Vests Work?

“Do weighted vests work?” “Should I buy one?” “Should I take my walks with a weighted vest?” “How much weight should I use?” 

In 2025, these are some of the most common questions I am asked! Weighted vests have gotten an incredible amount of press recently. Over the last few years, walking with weighted vests seemed like a promising way to strengthen bone density and improve fat loss for women in mid-life.

But unfortunately, as studies have taken shape, it doesn’t seem that the science is supporting walking with a weighted vest as the miracle that they were originally purported to be. But of course, there’s more to the story, and I’ll be exploring all the facts and possible uses of weighted vests. While I don’t think they’re a panacea, I do think they are useful!

But first, let’s look at the studies that have come out recently….

Weighted Vest Effectiveness Studies

Two recent studies have shown interesting results, but nuance is important as we read the conclusions…

Study #1

In this study, only 18 post-menopausal women were studied, and they were split into two groups – a group that exercised with weighted vests, and a group that didn’t exercise. Of course, the exercising group maintained their bone density, but it should jump out to anyone that it was maybe not the weighted vest that did the trick. The “control” group did not follow an exercise program – to be a true control group, they should have followed the same exercise program but without the weighted vest.

So basically, this study just shows that exercise helps you maintain bone density.

Study #2

In this study, which was better organized and slightly larger, two groups of women were compared – one group walked without a vest, and the other group walked with a weighted vest that gradually increased to 8% of their bodyweight. The conclusion? While there was no difference between the groups, there was – again – improvement in both groups for bone density measurements! The ultimate takeaway from both this study and the previous one is that exercise is a powerful intervention for bone density management.

How to Actually Use Them

Despite the fact that they are not a silver bullet for bone density or for fat loss, I don’t think that weighted vests are completely useless. In fact, I think they can be particularly helpful in certain situations, like…

• Adding weight to exercises where your hands are already busy (i.e., pull-up and push-up work) – this can be a fantastic way to build strength and progress exercises!
• Adding weight to exercises if you have a hand/wrist/forearm injury and can’t hold weights (i.e., doing lunges or squats with a weighted vest) – this could be very effective as long as the weight is heavy enough and you can progress it by adding more weight to the vest
• Using a heavy weighted vest to train for an event – I have clients who have trained for major hiking events, and I recommend using a heavy weighted vest on the stairclimber to boost their cardiovascular endurance (simulating the pack they will wear)

Bottom Line: The Weight Matters

I think that if you want to use a weighted vest, the weight really matters.

I think about all the times on vacation I’ve carried my 45-pound daughter while also wearing a backpack walking through cities, and I am 100% sure that my calorie output was higher because of the effort (compared to unweighted walking). But most people using weighted vests are wearing 10-20 pounds, which may only be 5-10% of their bodyweight. My daughter is 35% of my own bodyweight, just for comparison. I’m sure if I wore a 45-pound vest and got on a stairclimber for 30 minutes, I would be pretty fried. But…. this isn’t the same thing as taking a walk in your neighborhood with a 10-pound vest.

The Factors that Most Improve Bone Density

So if a weighted vest is not the answer, what exercise does improve bone density?

Three – somewhat related – factors are critically important:

• Weight-bearing exercise – in general, you want gravity bearing down on you to improve bone health. Exercise like swimming and biking are not as helpful for bone health as walking and running, for example.
• Impact-oriented exercise – running, for example, is better for bone density than walking, because you’re putting more weight on each step when you’re running than when you’re walking
• Heavy weightlifting close to max effort – generally speaking, weightlifting at minimum 80% of your one-rep-max is going to be the most helpful for bone health. “One-rep-max” is a technical term that can be difficult for people to calculate (especially if they’re newer to strength training). So the translation is: it needs to be pretty hard and heavy. In other words, if you do 8 reps of an exercise, reps 6-8 should feel very challenging and nearly undoable. Of course, you should work up to these levels over time (vs. destroying yourself in your first visit to the gym), but “very hard” should be your goal.

For bone health, it is crucial that we don’t think of “lightening up” on exercise as women age. Instead, we need to focus on safe, empowering, and effective ways to help women in midlife and beyond train hard. Intense, high-impact, demanding exercise prevents frailty.

What About Weighted Vests for Fat Loss?

If I add a 30-pound weighted vest to my 30-minute brisk walk, I could estimate that my calorie output would increase by about 25 calories per walk. So if I do this 7 times a week, that would be 175 calories per week.

175 calories is basically a grande latte from Starbucks once per week – without any sugar syrups! And that’s with a 30-pound weighted vest. 

So I could argue that – unless you are training for something specific where you will be carrying a heavy weighted pack – there are many other ways to create more caloric output with your exercise.

For example…

• You can crank up the incline on the treadmill to 5-8% for 30 minutes, instead of 0-2%
• You can do a stairclimber for 30 minutes instead of walking for 30 minutes
• You can do high-intensity interval training (like sprinting) instead of slogging

All of these strategies will double or triple the calories you burn from that same period of exercise, instead of just adding perhaps 20%.

But ultimately, the greatest fat loss results come from nutrition. Although my clients will hear me say it over and over again that I am “exercise forward” in my philosophy, there’s still no doubt that nutrition is going to be your most precise tool for creating a calorie deficit. Adding a weighted vest to walking will not make any kind of difference to your fat loss compared to taking a good hard look at the way you eat on a daily and weekly basis, in combination with keeping your general physical activity levels high.

Instead of creating a 150-200 calorie deficit per week, you can much more easily create that deficit per day – almost painlessly – with small nutrition shifts like measuring your peanut butter or coffee creamer… or by not eating a 1400-calorie meal on Saturday night.

So Do Weighted Vests Work?

Weighted vests are helpful for certain exercise applications, but – based on the available research – they are probably not significantly helpful for bone density or for optimizing fat loss, and they are certainly not a replacement for intense weight-bearing exercise (for bone density) or smart nutrition and general physical activity (for fat loss).

But I also don’t think they’re harmful, unless they’re creating back, shoulder, or neck strain. If you’ve lost 10 pounds and wear a 10-pound vest to essentially “replace” the weight when you’re walking, I don’t think there’s any downside. But what I don’t like about any kind of gadget (including watches, rings, etc.) is that they have the potential pitfall of distracting from the big picture. The most important thing is to keep your focus on your overall habits and how you’re organizing your training and nutrition. I would rather someone track their steps than use a weighted vest, for example.

Want help with narrowing down your strategies for improving your physical fitness and optimizing your body composition? Let’s talk.