Medical Edge Newspaper Column

Keeping Off the Weight You Lose

July 23, 2007
Readers:
It's the 20- or 40- or even 60-pound question. How do you lose weight and keep it off?

A team of researchers created the National Weight Control Registry to find out. Using newspaper and magazine advertisements, they identified about 5,000 people who had successfully lost weight and kept it off. Study participants lost an average of 72 pounds. Although some gained back some weight, all maintained at least a 30-pound loss.

A recent issue of Mayo Clinic Health Letter highlights successful weight-loss strategies that emerged from this research:

• Eating a low-fat, low-calorie diet: Strategies included restricting certain foods, limiting quantities, counting calories or fat grams, using a liquid or exchange diet. Whatever the method, 99 percent of participants reduced overall calorie intake.
• Getting high levels of physical activity: More than 90 percent of participants exercised regularly. The average expenditure of energy was the equivalent of a daily one-hour brisk walk. Walking was the most common activity.
• Eating breakfast: Nearly 80 percent of participants ate breakfast every day. Cereal and fruit topped the list.
• Frequent weighing: Seventy-five percent of participants weighed themselves at least once a week. About 60 percent of those people weighed themselves every day.

Once the weight was off, how did they keep it off? By maintaining behavior changes that worked to lose weight. Two factors that seem to predict long-term success were day-to-day consistency in diet and the ability to recognize when they were slipping back to their old habits. Those who dealt with small weight gains early were most likely to stop or reverse the gain. When participants maintained their weight loss for at least two years, they reduced the risk of regaining weight by 50 percent.

Another theme: No single strategy worked or was used 100 percent of the time. Any set of weight-loss techniques is only as good as the motivation to use it -- in both the short and long term. Among the study participants -- most of whom had tried and failed to lose weight in the past -- the most common motivation was a health concern or the realization that their weight had reached an all-time high.