Keeping it off can be as hard as losing it

Successful dieters adopt new habits

Losing extra pounds is half the battle, but keeping it off is the other half. Many people who maintain weight loss for years use various strategies: They often follow a low-calorie, low-fat diet of about 1,800 calories a day, keep track of food intake and walk about an hour a day or burn the same calories doing other physical activities. Those findings come from successful dieters in the National Weight Control Registry, a group of 10,000 people (about three-quarters are women) who have lost 30 pounds or more and maintained that loss for a year or more.

A survey of 3,000 of the participants showed that they weighed an average of 224 pounds before their weight loss, dropped an average of 69 pounds and had maintained an average of a 51pound loss at 10 years.

“These people are very successful at something that requires a lot of effort,” says Graham Thomas, co-investigator of the registry and an assistant professor at Brown University in Providence. “They built healthy habits and routines and made them a part of their everyday lifestyle. That makes it feel like less effort than it did at first.”

Many were motivated by health concerns such as high blood pressure, pre-diabetes or high cholesterol, Thomas says.

A study of registry members’ brains shows they “work harder to control their eating when tasty food is around than people who have always been at a normal weight,” he says.

Bonnie Taub-dix, a registered dietitian in New York City and blogger at yourlife.usatoday.com, says her patients who successfully maintain weight loss “realize that being slimmer has value: they value the way they look and feel and they value their health.”

To maintain their weight loss, registry members usually:

-Co-nt calories, carbs or fat grams or use a commercial weightloss program to track food intake.

-Eat breakfast regularly, often including whole grains and low-fat dairy products.

-Limit dining out to an average of three times a week, and fast food to less than once a week.

-Eat similar foods often and don’t splurge much.

-Watch fewer than 10 hours of TV a week.

-Weigh at least once a week.