As anyone who has done the yo-yo thing will tell you, the only thing harder than losing weight is keeping it off.
But the pattern of loss followed by gain is hardly inevitable, says obesity researcher James O. Hill, co-founder of a national registry of more than 6,000 people who have lost an average of 70 pounds and kept it off an average of six years.
“There is little similarity in how they lost weight, but great similarity in how they are maintaining their weight,” says Hill, who is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
These successful losers, most of them middle- aged white women, tend to share several patterns of behavior, ranging from eating breakfast daily to watching very little television (detailed list at right).
Hill says that many people who regain weight had tended to ignore one factor – the “energy gap” that a large weight loss creates.
“When you lose weight, your energy requirement goes down,” he explains. “If you are a 220-pound person and you drop to 180 pounds, for example, your body needs 320 calories less per day. That’s a lot less. You just can’t go back to the lifestyle you lived before.”
To burn 320 calories by walking, Hill notes, a person must take 6,400 steps. Interestingly, that is almost exactly the difference between the 11,000 steps taken each day by the average member of the weight-
loss registry and the 5,300 steps taken by the average person who comes to Hill’s weight-loss clinic for treatment.
The National Weight Control Registry (nwcr.ws), established in 1993, is open to individuals 18 and older who have lost at least 30 pounds and maintained that loss for at least one year. Signups are free, and names are kept confidential.
Besides similar weight-control strategies, Hill says, many of the registrants have similar backgrounds. Two-thirds were overweight as children, and about the same number had at least one parent who was overweight.
“What’s amazing,” he observes, “is how many of these people change careers to reflect their new interest in food and nutrition. They become dietitians. They become personal trainers. They change their friends and their social lives. To sustain weight loss requires large behavioral changes. They’ve essentially changed their environment.”
Staff writer Jack Cox can be reached at 303-954-1785 or jcox@denverpost.com.
1. They eat breakfast. Unlike fat people, who skip breakfast, have lunch and then eat virtually non-stop from about 4 p.m. until they go to bed, “these people almost never skip breakfast,” obesity researcher Jame O. Hill says. “Calories ingested in the morning have a greater satiating effect than calories eaten later in the day.”
2. They make friends with the scale.
“These people use scales a lot,” Hill says. “Almost all of them use a scale weekly, and some use it daily.” Such regular checks enable them to catch weight regain early on, he says, so they can take action to get back on track as soon as they see their target number go up more than 2 or 3 pounds.
3. They keep moving.
“Walking is huge,” Hill reports. A survey of participants in the registry found that on average, they get 60 minutes of physical activity per day, with 28 percent mostly walking, 49 percent combining walking with
cycling, aerobics or lifestyle changes such as parking farther away, and 14 percent mainly doing activities other than walking. Meanwhile, 9 percent “do nothing” – i.e. they control their weight through diet alone.
4. They stick to their eating plan.
Most successful losers report consuming 1,300 to 1,400 calories per day over the long term, with only about 25 percent of the total derived from fat, compared to 30 percent or more in the typical American diet. Also, their eating habits are consistent from day to day – they don’t take “holidays” when anything goes.
5. They stay away from the tube.
The formerly fat “watch much less TV than the national average” – about 10 hours a week, or less than half of the typical 28 hours or so. Presumably, they’re less likely to be snacking and more likely to be physically active during the nonwatching hours.
