Support that Doesn't Focus on Challenges but on Relationship

Mari22na wrote: »

Only 5% of dieters are maintaining a major weight loss at the 5 year mark. It's 7% for those with WLS at the 5 year mark.

"It is a depressing article of faith among the overweight and those who treat them that 95 percent of people who lose weight regain it -- and sometimes more -- within a few months or years.
That statistic has been quoted widely over the last four decades, in Congressional hearings, diet books, research papers and seminars.

In San Diego County, weight-loss and metabolism specialists said these diets really can help people find a successful path to weight loss through healthier eating and increased physical activity. But they also cautioned that on their own, diets are no lasting fix.

Many people need ongoing support from dietitians and other weight-control experts to make immediate dieting victories permanent, as well as to handle the body’s genetically driven mechanisms that automatically switch on in a bid to preserve every pound of weight a dieter tries to shed.

The word “diet” itself suggests impermanence, noted Dr. Eduardo Grunvald with the UC San Diego Weight Management Program. That mindset, he said, is often the biggest barrier to achieving truly sustainable success.

“You can do any diet you want, but if it only lasts for three months, then it’s really not much good. Weight loss is really a behavioral issue, not a nutrition issue,” Grunvald said.

Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Nutrition and Metabolic Research Center at Scripps Clinic, said the best diet is the one a person likes enough to stick with it for the long run.

“If you think of diet as a four-letter word where you’re going to grind it out and eventually go back to the way you were eating before you started, that’s going to be a recipe for failure. When you look at people who successfully maintain weight loss, they do make permanent lifestyle changes,” Fujioka said.

Weight loss is relatively easy for some individuals while seemingly impossible for others — even when they have the same level of self-discipline and dedication. Also, maintaining weight loss can be much more difficult if a person initially packed on a large number of pounds.

Stephanie Metzner, a dietitian with the Sharp Rees-Stealy medical group in San Diego County, said diets and diet lists are all well and good — as long as there is an understanding that sustainable weight loss is not a fast process.

“Weight management is a skill set that we view like learning to play the piano. It takes practice and it takes over-practice,” she said.

At the end of the day, she said, Rees-Stealy counsels its weight-loss patients that their journey should take at least a year. And some will need to come back for counseling indefinitely.

“For many of our patients, unhealthy lifestyle habits have existed for many decades, and changing them can be really daunting,” Metzner said. “Some people have those new habits in place after one year, and we have some people who have been in our program for 20 years.”