Old NY Times Article - Why 95% failure may not be accurate

Pearsquared

Ran across it while on Reddit. Thought it might be good motivation to know that "95% of diets fail" may not be accurate.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/05/25/health/95-regain-lost-weight-or-do-they.html

Pretty interesting article. Some key points:

1. The study that stated a 95% failure rate for diets only had 100 participants, and those participants were basically given a set diet and told to have at it. Revolutionary for the time because everyone thought dieting was easy, and this showed it was not; however, it may have gone too far to the side of "not".

2. Many modern weight loss studies involve participants who are part of weight loss clinics - in other words, they're already the trouble cases - the ones that have struggled the most with weight loss, and have turned to a clinic for help.

3. Most people who lose weight do it on their own, and the Weight Loss Registry wants to more accurately track these people to see how long they keep the weight off.

What do you think of the article?

W8G0

Thanks for sharing that article. It does a nice job of pointing out why what's been viewed as common knowledge should be questioned. I didn't know the historical context of that result and it's very easy to understand why that result might not hold today.

Hopefully this can help people stay motivated who were discouraged by that 95% figure.

Thanks again.

-K