What is strong evidence showing that exercise is useful for weight loss?

Can't help you on the "peer reviewed" part.  There is none.  Exercise is positively associated with every health measure but weight.  (Got this from the doctor who wrote the latest update to the Atkins system; he works at Duke.  It wasn't a popular result with the crowd that had come to his book signing.) Essentially, most of our calories are consumed in basal metabolism.  Additional exercise, except in the case of very cold weather or Olympic level atheletes, burns very few calories, calories that are far too easily replaced by after-workout drinks and entitlement eating.

EXERCISE TO LOSE WEIGHTIf someone told you right now what the absolute http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/default.htm to http://www.webmd.com/diet/old-diet-toc was, would you do it? You might when you read this. Drum roll, please! The best exercise to lose weight is: “the exercise you’ll do,” says Timothy Church, MD, MPH, PhD, a professor at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La. Other experts interviewed by WebMD said much the same thing about weight loss workouts. “The two things that stop people from losing weight with exercise are either boredom or injury,” says physical therapist and strength and conditioning specialist Ben Quist, PhD, NSCA. The truth is that weight loss is about creating a calorie deficit — in other words, burning more calories than you take in. So, they say, while http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/guide/fitness-basics-running-for-your-life at an 8-minute-mile pace might be a great calorie burner, if you’re not going to do it, it’s not going to help you. Instead, start with something you can do, like http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/walking-for-wellness or working out on an elliptical machine or exercise bike.Read more on http://healthbeautz.com/exercise-to-lose-weight/.