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Long-term success rates by approach or type of diet?
NorthCascades
Posts: 10,968 Member
in Debate Club
I keep hearing that 90+ % of people who lose weight gain it back. Usually it seems to mean people shouldn't bother trying to lose weight. Here's an example:
A lot of people take up crash diets that are obviously not sustainable, quit them, and gain back anything they've lost, sometimes with interest.
Other people take different approaches. Some use calorie counting over time to come to an understanding about energy balance or to change their ideas about portion sizes, then apply what they've learned going forward.
My question is whether there are statistics about weight regain, broken out by approach to weight loss. I feel like the 90+ % failure rate does not apply to people taking a slower and more sustainable approach, but I haven't been able to find much data to back that up.
This isn't really a debate topic (although I won't be surprised if it gets hijacked and becomes a debate) but I feel like people drawn to debate forums tend to be more interested in objective evidence, so I have a better chance of somebody having an answer here than in other sub forums.
The results show, once again, Dr. Leibel said, that losing weight “is not a neutral event,” and that it is no accident that more than 90 percent of people who lose a lot of weight gain it back. “You are putting your body into a circumstance it will resist,” he said. “You are, in a sense, more metabolically normal when you are at a higher body weight.”
A solution might be to restore hormones to normal levels by giving drugs after dieters lose weight. But it is also possible, said Dr. Jules Hirsch of Rockefeller University, that researchers just do not know enough about obesity to prescribe solutions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/health/biological-changes-thwart-weight-loss-efforts-study-finds.html
A lot of people take up crash diets that are obviously not sustainable, quit them, and gain back anything they've lost, sometimes with interest.
Other people take different approaches. Some use calorie counting over time to come to an understanding about energy balance or to change their ideas about portion sizes, then apply what they've learned going forward.
My question is whether there are statistics about weight regain, broken out by approach to weight loss. I feel like the 90+ % failure rate does not apply to people taking a slower and more sustainable approach, but I haven't been able to find much data to back that up.
This isn't really a debate topic (although I won't be surprised if it gets hijacked and becomes a debate) but I feel like people drawn to debate forums tend to be more interested in objective evidence, so I have a better chance of somebody having an answer here than in other sub forums.
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I'm not sure where the 90% failure rate comes from, but I'm also not sure where the belief that slower weight loss has a higher success rate comes from either. We certainly see plenty of posts from users who used MFP to help lose weight in the past and are back because they regained, and there are certainly people on this site who would be considered "success stories" who have gained back some of the weight (usually due to life circumstances) and are buckling down again to lose it. Obviously, this is a health and fitness site, so we are going to see posts like that, but that also means we're going to see a higher number of people who did manage to keep it off than in the general population, so we can't really extrapolate that the MFP method is necessarily superior either. I remember seeing an article around here somewhere comparing rate of loss to regain, but iirc, it didn't follow the participants long enough after the loss to be of any significance.4
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Check out the national weight control registry site. They compile data on such things.5
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I did HcG which is a VLCD and lost 60lbs.
I was maintaining my new weight but I met a boy. We fell in love, our "thing" was taking each other out, drinking pretty much every night as well as eating out. That bad habit quickly became the new "normal" for me and I gained about 75-80lbs back over a 2 year time span.
I'm not going to lie that my eating habits were out of control. I could probably eat a good 2000 cals without even thinking about it.
Since I decided to make the change again, but not a low calorie diet I have lost 40lbs and about another 40lbs to go. I think I have a better relationship with myself, my habits and my body. I can't predict the future but knowing what I know now may be the key to keeping it off.5 -
I don't have anything official to post here, but from reading and searching on the internet in the past, the approach or type of diet doesn't seem to matter - i.e. low carb or high carb or packaged meals or Weightwatchers. The rates remain the same. As for speed of loss, at least in people who start higher up on the scale, quick initial losses actually predicted more total loss at one year and greater compliance than slower losers. The study didn't go for years, though.3
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Where people fail is they view loosing weight as a temporary thing and go right back to treating their bodies like dumpsters and pick back up old habits once they loose some.
Those who treat it as a permanent lifestyle change, keep it off.13 -
Type of diet, rate of loss, etc, has no predictive value for long term outcome. Mainstream education about nutrition and healthy habits is useless at best, counterproductive at worst; telling people (in detail) what to do, without making sure they know why, and what they are doing, will make people aim for random goals, fail, and end up with even worse habits, just from the feelings of failure in such basic tasks as feeding oneself and move one's body.
I think measuring and assessing people's attitudes is more difficult than dividing them into groups based on diet type and checking off boxes of single behaviors. But scientists can do that and I suppose it makes them feel they are doing something.1 -
I would expect around 99.9% of people* who have gained weight have at some point lost weight.
It is typical for newborns to lose weight in the first few days, so everyone over that age is a weight gainer but ha, in the past, lost weight.
Not sure what my point is, other than: Statistics are weird and often paint a very strange picture.
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I think for 1 there is so much Bro science out there it becomes fact to the masses.
No body wants to lose 1 or 2 pounds a week. They want to lose 30 pounds in 30 days!
Most people set them self's up to fail before they even start with unrealistic caloric restrictions that cant be sustained mentally or physically that lead to binge eating . No body is perfect and nobody had unlimited will power.
I could go on and on
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If I remember correctly, the 90% failure rate was taken from a study where they didn't even check who tried to lose weight. So basically they took a bunch of overweight people and checked a few years later how many of them lost weight or not.7
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My question is whether there are statistics about weight regain, broken out by approach to weight loss. I feel like the 90+ % failure rate does not apply to people taking a slower and more sustainable approach, but I haven't been able to find much data to back that up.
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I kind of doubt there are accurate statistics, since we're comparing humans and not something "uniform", like cars (or even domestic animals that eat the same food every day). I think all you can do is look at the longevity of something like Weight Watchers (slow and steady weight loss), for example, and assume that it works. I doubt, however, that WW has any data on how many people regain the weight they lost, simply because a LOT of people are too embarrassed to show up at a WW meeting after a significant weight gain? (Plus they might assume that WW "didn't work" for them)
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Where people fail is they view loosing weight as a temporary thing and go right back to treating their bodies like dumpsters and pick back up old habits once they loose some.
Those who treat it as a permanent lifestyle change, keep it off.
This says it all.
I've lost significant weight in the past, but I did not do a single thing to maintain the weight loss. I failed, not my diet.6 -
The only way I have been able to lose weight and keep it off for any period of time has been Weight Watchers, but I just hate Weight Watchers!!! I always get sick of it. It seems like their program I have to fit into, rather than my own program, and I don't like all their silly trappings. It's also expensive.
But what I realized is that what really worked for me in WW is the tracking of daily intake of food. If I tracked, I lost, period. If I stopped tracking I gained. I like the tracking system here at MFP better and it's free. So that's my plan. WW has a saying I like, "If you bite it, write it!"
It's funny too, I don't have that much of a problem meeting my diet tracking goals if I track. It's like a psychological "switch" that turns on. If I am paying attention to what I eat, I eat better and I eat less, without really trying.7 -
Vodka is not processed?4
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"Processed" has no common definition, so it's a pretty useless term, anyway.2
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I think processed does, although it is often used incorrectly. I actually get more confused by "highly processed." If I buy a wrap from Pret, is that highly processed? I'd assume so, but it can be (IMO) perfectly healthy and consistent with my goals and fit in my day just about as easily as something I'd pack for lunch myself, if not having a lazy morning.0
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But what I realized is that what really worked for me in WW is the tracking of daily intake of food. If I tracked, I lost, period. If I stopped tracking I gained. I like the tracking system here at MFP better and it's free. So that's my plan. WW has a saying I like, "If you bite it, write it!"
It's funny too, I don't have that much of a problem meeting my diet tracking goals if I track. It's like a psychological "switch" that turns on. If I am paying attention to what I eat, I eat better and I eat less, without really trying.
Same for me - I HATE to track calories (wanton eating is so much more *fun*!) - but now that I am, I've been very faithful and the pounds are slowly dropping. So I guess I'll be hanging around here for a while....LOL!
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lemurcat12 wrote: »I think processed does, although it is often used incorrectly. I actually get more confused by "highly processed." If I buy a wrap from Pret, is that highly processed? I'd assume so, but it can be (IMO) perfectly healthy and consistent with my goals and fit in my day just about as easily as something I'd pack for lunch myself, if not having a lazy morning.
Ok, no common usage
More important is - exactly what you are pointing to - the overall quality of the food and the overall quality of one's diet.0 -
I've been dairy, gluten and sugar free for years
I never eat processed or packaged food
...
I also take tons of vitamins and probiotics
(It's my business)
I love to share my tips!
So what exactly are you trying to sell? Because you've posted this same post in several threads.
I believe whatever diet you choose, the key is if you can do it for the rest of your life. It's folks trying to change too much too fast, banning most of the foods they love, aiming for unrealistic goals, and making the whole thing too damn complicated. I could never do low carb because it would be a complete overhaul of my diet and cut out 75% of my favorite foods. I would fail miserably. But I know several people who went low carb and were successful, because they were happy getting to eat more "fatty" foods that they used to avoid because they thought they weren't "diet" foods.
And I guess more specific to the OP, I doubt those kinds of statistics exist, and if they do, they would be from surveys where you are counting on people being honest about things like diet, exercise, and body weight.6 -
Thanks, everybody, for sharing your thoughts.
I had hoped that the type of statistics I'm looking for (even if I can only vaguely describe them) existed somewhere and clever people would point me to them, but it looks like @kimny72 is right and they probably don't. The national weight control registry is fascinating, there's some good info in there, and everybody should have a look at it.0 -
Now I'm pretty sure there's no research specifically on approach/attitude. Yoni Freedhoff talks about the weight registry here, at 33 minutes in:
https://youtu.be/6FSyzNPoxDY?t=1982 1 -
Stanford study - low carb (atkins) came out on top both for amount of weight initially lost and amount kept off long term.
No link handy but google is your friend
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Given Google ranks results in terms of popularity instead of scientific accuracy (Mercola and Lustig come out on top of many searches despite being junk science), saying to go Google it is unhelpful.gwynethsomeday wrote: »Stanford study - low carb (atkins) came out on top both for amount of weight initially lost and amount kept off long term.
No link handy but google is your friend
And that is one weight loss study, looking at the entire body of that research and scientific consensus, and accounting for the QUALITY of those studies (there are a lot of junk ones out there), shows no difference of long term fat loss for any of the different diets. And weight initially lost ≠ fat loss. Low carb diets show a large increase in initial weight loss to large amounts of water weight lost as glycogen stores are depleted. Which is part of why they are popular. If a low carb diet is helpful in weight loss because it increases adherence , then by all means go for it. But ultimately, weight loss comes to CI<CO, regardless of diet.
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Personally, I think theNorthCascades wrote: »I keep hearing that 90+ % of people who lose weight gain it back. Usually it seems to mean people shouldn't bother trying to lose weight. Here's an example:
Other people take different approaches. Some use calorie counting over time to come to an understanding about energy balance or to change their ideas about portion sizes, then apply what they've learned going forward.
I personally think those that come to understand energy balance and change their approach about portion sizes are probably the ones with the best long term results. It may not necessarily be because this is the best approach, but the person who is willing to put in that much time and effort into something is a lot more motivated to do it right and stick with it. The person who using other methods that are basically short cuts to getting CI<CI (Atkins/Low Carb, WW Points, cabbage soups diet, etc...) aren't nearly as invested or motivated and also tend to be looking for quick, unrealistic or unhealthy results. I think if you gave the scientific, unsexy energy balance and nutrition information to some people, all they are going to hear is this...
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The_Enginerd wrote: »The person who using other methods that are basically short cuts to getting CI<CI (Atkins/Low Carb, WW Points, cabbage soups diet, etc...) aren't nearly as invested or motivated and also tend to be looking for quick, unrealistic or unhealthy results.
This is just an opinion, though. No evidence presented.
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Honestly think that a big educational push on weighing/calorie counting targeting the general public would be helpful. Wouldn't be profitable though, so not likely.
Yes, measuring and tracking is a PITA. I'm old enough to have tried it back in dinosaur days with a spring scale that had no TARE function and a thick paperback book that you had to search through for every food...pre-internet. That sucked.
So I tried all kinds of things with varying levels of success, because I just really could not deal with that long term.
An app and a scale that you can TARE? Not so bad. Not fun by any means, but not so bad.1 -
And I stated it was my personal thoughts in the first sentence of my post... which you snipped out of my reply you quoted... but you are welcome to point to a study if you know of one which has the long term success rates for the different types of diets.The_Enginerd wrote: »The person who using other methods that are basically short cuts to getting CI<CI (Atkins/Low Carb, WW Points, cabbage soups diet, etc...) aren't nearly as invested or motivated and also tend to be looking for quick, unrealistic or unhealthy results.
This is just an opinion, though. No evidence presented.
That opinion is based on 5+ years of experience of seeing who was successful long term (both on MFP and in real life) and on the ebb and flow of MFP users who stuck around and stayed successful.2 -
It's not the "diet"; it's the person.
Anything that restricts calories can succeed, but there's no point in trying if it's not part of a lifestyle change. And many (most?) people aren't willing to change their lifestyle.2 -
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I've lost 30 lbs on MFP and have been maintaining for over a year now. This was really my first concentrated effort to lose weight, having slowly gained after college and then with marriage and a couple kids... So I don't have experience with losing and failing to keep the weight off.
What I will say is I feel like knowledge of my numbers is the single biggest factor for me in predicting that I will be able to maintain a healthy weight forever. I fully understand and appreciate how the CICO energy balance works, and so knowing what calories I need to maintain my weight makes it pretty simple to commit myself to staying within that number. I know the number may change over time or that there may be extenuating circumstances that would change my habits (injury, illness, change in personal situation) but I feel like having the fundamental knowledge of how the energy balance works means that when things do change, or weight starts to creep back on, I have all the tools to be able to address it swiftly as long as I remain committed to maintaining this healthy weight.
If more people understood the energy balance concept and took the time to accurately determine their own numbers I feel like success rates would be higher. Losing weight via a particular "diet" or method without learning the fundamentals behind it seems easier to just let things slip, but again, no direct experience just a hypothesis.6 -
WinoGelato wrote: »I've lost 30 lbs on MFP and have been maintaining for over a year now. This was really my first concentrated effort to lose weight, having slowly gained after college and then with marriage and a couple kids... So I don't have experience with losing and failing to keep the weight off.
What I will say is I feel like knowledge of my numbers is the single biggest factor for me in predicting that I will be able to maintain a healthy weight forever. I fully understand and appreciate how the CICO energy balance works, and so knowing what calories I need to maintain my weight makes it pretty simple to commit myself to staying within that number. I know the number may change over time or that there may be extenuating circumstances that would change my habits (injury, illness, change in personal situation) but I feel like having the fundamental knowledge of how the energy balance works means that when things do change, or weight starts to creep back on, I have all the tools to be able to address it swiftly as long as I remain committed to maintaining this healthy weight.
If more people understood the energy balance concept and took the time to accurately determine their own numbers I feel like success rates would be higher. Losing weight via a particular "diet" or method without learning the fundamentals behind it seems easier to just let things slip, but again, no direct experience just a hypothesis.
And this realization, is what has led me to, and constantly reaffirmed my belief that the mentally lazy are far more likely to remain obese, and/or relapse into it.
It's not nice. There are exceptions. However, on the whole, this has been my observation. Basically, "durrhurr learning is effort"=fat.3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ss2hULhXf04
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