Lessons from National Weight Control Registry

zen1910

Hello All!

I don't normally post on these Community sites, but I found this cool article from the National Weight Control Registry and it was extremely helpful to me, so I felt it was important to share it with others who are losing weight and never ever EVER want to regain it.

The National Weight Control registry collected data from thousands of people who have successfully lost weight, they then present their findings on the common strategies and behaviors of these "successful losers" and "successful maintainers." Successful losers are people who have lost at least 10% of their body weight and successful maintainers are those who have kept it off for at least a year.

This article shares the lessons they learned by studying successful losers, they identified 4 common behavior traits among people who have (on average) kept weight off for 5.5 years. They include:

1) eating a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet;
2) eating breakfast almost every day;
3) frequent self-monitoring of weight; and
4) participation in a high level of physical activity.

If anyone wants to read the full article that includes all of the statistics and data, along with extra tips, you can visit this link to the NWCR site and they even include a free pdf download of the study. Here is the link: http://xnet.kp.org/permanentejournal/sum03/registry.html


This was really helpful for me to read, I hope it can help making sure we never ever regain the weight we worked so hard to lose!

bcattoes

Thanks! I'm going to check that out. The low-fat surprises me a little, but the rest is no surprise.

laurynwithawhy

Thanks! I'm going to check that out. The low-fat surprises me a little, but the rest is no surprise.

The high-carb part gets me more than the low-fat.

Pearsquared

Thanks! I'm going to check that out. The low-fat surprises me a little, but the rest is no surprise.

The high-carb part gets me more than the low-fat.

It is quite interesting, but like studies similar to this, it may be more correlation than causation.

cdjs77

Thanks! I'm going to check that out. The low-fat surprises me a little, but the rest is no surprise.

The high-carb part gets me more than the low-fat.

It is quite interesting, but like studies similar to this, it may be more correlation than causation.

That's what I would guess. Fat has more calories per gram (9) than carbohydrates or protein (both 4), so those that keep the weight off are probably filling them selves up with less calories, i.e. eating more protein and carbs than fat. Obviously you could still eat a high fat diet and keep the weight off if you counted calories, but its probably easier to keep the weight off without being too diligent if you stick to lower calorie macronutrients.