Steve Pope wrote:
>
> Doug does have a point about Einstein's truism because the data
> suggests that about 70% of Americans who attempt sustained weight-loss
> do not achieve it, and these individuals repeat this behavior at
> at a rate of perhaps 2.5 attempts per year. It is probably not
> difficult to find individuals who "go on a diet" at something
> like this frequency throughout most of their adult life. This
> leads to the often-quoted statistic that 90% of 95% of weight-loss
> attempts fail.

About 6 months ago there was a Scientific Amercian article about
dieting. It pointed out that there is plenty of medical research about
losing fat but no progress *at all* has been made is keeping it off. No
progress at all in the last several decades. Which is why common
dieting statements can be safely ignored as false. People who say
something about losing fat and keeping it off have zero idea of how it
is actually done by the few who manage it. Many are simply lucky they
never got fat in the first place. Glancing at what thin people eat
makes that clear. It's like gambling where most lose but some win.

There is a National Weight Loss Registry that keeps data on folks who
managed to keep their loss off for 2+ years. Those are people who
actually know the topic and the data on them is very revealing. The
problem I had with them is when I read their questionaire it was not
possible to tell them I had lost my weight low carbing and kept it off
low carbing so I declined to answer knowing I would just become more
data on how low fat works. I have not checked their questionaire in
years. I hope they have changed that issue.

The best I know of is dieting plans that trigger fat loss without
hunger, that only work until the last 10-20 pounds. And they are all
unstable during their maintenance phase. Go off the plan and no matter
that you weren't hungry before eating the wrong thing you are after
eating the wrong thing. Most plans are nowhere near that effective.
Many depend on constant unending hunger and focus on losing as fast as
possible ignoring what happens during maintenance. Some use Weight
Watchers as their maintenance phase (which is a good thing compared to
most plans).

Setting aside the problem of not including low carbers, what does the
registry say about people who have kept it off for 2+ years? (Among
other things the fact that they need to go with a time period that short
is not a good sign. The odds don't favor keeping it off until it's been
kept off for 5+ years.) They eat breakfast (an ounce of preventing
hunger is worth a pound of curing hunger). They exercise (given that a
pound of fat is a marathon this says exercise is good at preventing
regain). They were in no hurry to lose the weight (the reverse of
money, with fat it's easy go, easy come back). They used every program
listed on the questionaire (everyone is different).