What Is The Real Secret To Losing Weight Long-term?

The media is full of success stories about people losing large amount of weight and obtaining the body of their dreams.  The other turn of the coin is that the majority of these people gain this weight back plus more, right?

Meredith Melnick of Healthland Time found an interesting study that proves what the majority of people believe to be true about dieters may not be true.

“Dieters always regain lost weight, right? Not so, according to a new analysis of data from the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), whose 10,000 participants have lost at least 30 lbs. and kept the weight off for a year or longer.”

I believe that anyone can lose weight, but the real challenge is keeping it off for the rest of your life.  The only way to do this is to make a complete lifestyle change. It sounds to me that more people that actually lose weight and keep it off understand this know according to this study.

“Based on answers to questionnaires that all participants filled out yearly, researchers found that weight regain mostly happened early on, shortly after the initial weight loss. Over time, weight gain slowed. At five years, participants had regained about 17 lbs. By the end of the 10-year follow-up, participants had gained one more pound on average — managing, in the end, to keep off 51 lbs.”

Sounds like success to me!  Here is how they claimed they did it:

• “Track their food intake”
• “Count calorie or fat grams or use a commercial weight-loss program to track food intake”
• “Follow a low-calorie, low-fat diet. They take in about 1,800 calories a day and less than 30% of calories from fat.”
• “Eat breakfast regularly”
• “Limit the amount they eat out. They dine out an average of three times a week and eat fast food less than once a week.”
• “Eat similar foods regularly and don’t splurge much on holidays and special occasions”
• “Walk about an hour a day or burn the same calories with other activities”
• “Watch fewer than 10 hours of TV a week”
• “Weigh themselves at least once a week”

The great thing about everything listed here is that it is not expensive or complicated.  All of this is good old common sense.  These are the things that people who care about losing weight and keeping it off do for the long-term.  Sad to say, the average person that wants to lose weight will not put in the time and discipline to have these results year after year.

Source: http://healthland.time.com/2011/10/21/long-term-weight-loss-is-possible-how-successful-dieters-do-it/