Best support for maintaining weight loss

Published in a recent New England Journal of Medicine, researchers wanted to know what the best form of follow-up was for people who had successfully lost 42# in the last two years.

Participants were broken into three groups; 105 people were the control group, who received quarterly newsletters, 104 people received face-to-face intervention and 104 people received internet-based intervention. The two study groups were taught to weigh themselves daily and learned strategies of what to do if they noticed an increase in their weight.

After 18 months, the people who only received newsletters regained 5-25 pounds, the group who received internet-based intervention regained 9-29 pounds and the face-to-face group regained 10-20 pounds.

Researchers concluded that people who receive more face-to-face intervention are better able to maintain weight loss than those who do not receive any intervention. They also concluded that daily weighing could help people monitor their weight and make adjustments more quickly.

However, I have worked with many clients who weigh themselves daily and I strongly discourage such an activity. Daily weighing helps the person focus entirely on what their weight is that day, not on healthy eating habits. When a person weighs themselves daily, and they see an increase in the weight, two things often happen:

1. They feel incredible guilt. They wonder what they did wrong to cause the increase, and then they promise themselves they will be ‘good’ that day. Often this includes trying to not eat in the morning, which results in binging later in the day, and thus more guilt.

2. They set up this obsession that they have to continue to weigh themselves daily, and as they restrict their eating more and more, and falling prey to uncontrolled eating, they fall further into a crevasse of shame, guilt and chronic hunger.

Weighing yourself on a daily basis will tell you more about what your fluid balance is like than exactly what your weight is doing. Weekly weighing is fine, but for people who obsess over their weight, I will suggest that they stick to monthly weighing.

If you are trying to lose weight, learn how to space your meals so you don’t skip meals and are not hungry between meals. I often tell clients that if they are hungry, eat fruit. You cannot eat so much fruit that you gain weight, no matter what you may hear in the media. And it satisfies that sweet tooth while providing incredible nutrients to the body!

To read the abstract of the above study, click

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/abstract/355/15/1563