Statistics of weight loss programs

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Statista Accounts: Access All Statistics. Basic Account. The ideal entry-level account for individual users. In , CDC Between , CDC The number of adults who diet has increased over the past 10 years. The percentage of people on a diet grew from CDC More women than men diet. The reasons for obesity and overweight are: not having access to parks, affordable gyms, and other outdoor and indoor spaces for physical activity, oversized food portions, not having access to affordable, healthy food, and food advertising that encourages buying unhealthy foods, such as high-fat snacks and sugary drinks.

NIH Also stress is a major contributing factor to overweight and obesity. People eat more high-fat, high-calorie food when stressed, while the body stores more fat during stressful periods. Obesity Review Stress decreases motivation to exercise and increases cravings and overall weight gain. Obesity Reviews Adults who have tried to lose weight, most commonly report exercise European Society of Cardiology However, overweight and obese people are still at greater cardiovascular risk than people whose weight is normal.

According to the findings, people who felt they ate too much junk food, had eaten or drunk too much, or reported having too many late-night snacks were more likely to report having physical problems the next morning, including headaches, stomachaches, and diarrhea.

Plus, they were also more likely to report emotional strains, such as feeling ashamed for their diet choices. The physical and emotional strains made them more likely to report declines in helping behavior going the extra mile at work and increases in withdrawal behavior withdrawing from work-related situations. Journal of Applied Psychology A study by the University of Nottingham, that followed , adults for more than 10 years, shows that people who are overweight risk heart failure and dying prematurely.

American Journal of Public Health Obesity is the top reason for early, preventable deaths. Appetite Diet failure statistics Are diets a good weight-loss strategy?

Sustained weight loss only occurred in a small minority and complete weight gain was found in the majority. American Psychologist One study of more than 19, healthy older men over a four-year period showed that one of the best predictors of weight gain over that time was that they had lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started.

American Psychologist One-third to two-thirds regain the weight they lose on diets. American Psychologist A study performed on mice shows that dieting increases stress sensitivity and stress makes us seek out rewarding things like high-fat and high-calorie foods. The Journal of Neuroscience Caloric deprivation makes your brain more attentive to pictures of food.

Six years after participating in the show, the contestants had regained their weight and body fat. Conclusion: Complete provider adherence to antenatal care guidelines at first antenatal visit influences delivery and neonatal outcomes.

While there is the need to explore and understand explanatory mechanisms for these observations, programs that promote complete adherence to guidelines will improve the pregnancy outcomes. Abstract Background: Guideline utilization aims at improvement in quality of care and better health outcomes. Publication types Research Support, Non-U. As people progressively lose more and more weight, they fight an increasing battle against the biological responses that oppose further weight loss.

Appetite changes likely play a more important role than slowing metabolism in explaining the weight loss plateau since the feedback circuit controlling long-term calorie intake has greater overall strength than the feedback circuit controlling calorie expenditure. Despite these predictable physiologic phenomena, the typical response of the patient is to blame themselves as lazy or lacking in willpower, sentiments that are often reinforced by healthcare providers, as in the example of Robert, above.

Using a validated mathematical model of human energy balance dynamics 27 , 31 , Figure 2 illustrates the energy balance dynamics underlying the weight loss time courses of two example 90 kg women who either regain blue curves or maintain orange curves much of their lost weight after reaching a plateau within the first year of a diet intervention. In both women, large decreases in calorie intake at the start of the intervention result in rapid loss of weight and body fat leading to a modest decrease in calorie expenditure that contributes to slowing weight loss.

However, the exponential rise in calorie intake from its initially reduced value is the primary factor that halts weight loss within the first year. Mathematical model simulations of body weight, fat mass, energy intake, energy expenditure, appetite, and effort for two hypothetical women participating in a weight loss program. The curves in blue depict the typical weight loss, plateau and regain trajectory whereas the orange curves show successful weight loss maintenance.

While self-reported diet measurements are notoriously inaccurate and imprecise 34 — 36 , it may be possible to reconcile such data with objectively quantified increases in calorie intake. It is entirely possible that patients truly believe they are sticking with their diet despite not losing any more weight or even regaining weight.

Thus, signals to the brain that increase appetite with weight loss could introduce subconscious biases such as portion sizes creeping upwards over time.

Furthermore, a relatively persistent effort is required to avoid overeating to match the increased appetite that grows in proportion to the weight lost New technologies using repeated weight monitoring can be used calculate changes in calorie intake and effort over time 40 and help guide individuals participating in a weight loss intervention 41 — The more typical pattern of long-term weight regain is characterized by a waning effort to sustain the intervention.

There are likely many factors that account for the ability of some patients to achieve and maintain large weight losses over the long term whereas others experience substantial weight regain. Unravelling the biological, psychosocial, educational, and environmental determinants of such individual variability will be an active area of obesity research for the foreseeable future The laws of thermodynamics dictate that the energy derived from macronutrients being oxidized via the intricate biochemical pathways of oxidative phosphorylation inside cells can be equated to the values measured by combusting these fuels in a bomb calorimeter.

Altering dietary macronutrient composition could theoretically influence overall calorie intake or expenditure resulting in a corresponding change in body weight. Alternatively, manipulation of diet composition can result in differences in the endocrine status in a way that could theoretically influence the propensity to accumulate body fat or affect subjective hunger or satiety. Therefore, it is theoretically possible that a particular diet could result in an advantageous endocrine or metabolic state that promotes weight loss.

This promise provides fodder for the diet industry and false hope to the patient with obesity since it implies that if they simply choose the right diet then weight loss can be easily achieved. In recent years, there has been a reemergence of low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets as popular weight loss interventions.

Such diets have been claimed to reverse the metabolic and endocrine derangements resulting from following advice to consume low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets that allegedly caused the obesity epidemic. Therefore, the carbohydrate-insulin model implies that reversing these processes by eating a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet should result in effortless weight loss Nevertheless, low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets may lead to spontaneous reduction in calorie reduction and increased weight loss, especially over the short term 50 — Meta-analyses of long-term weight loss have suggested that low-fat weight loss diets are slightly, if statistically, inferior to low-carbohydrate diets 53 , but the average differences between diets is too small to be clinically significant Furthermore, the similarity of the mean weight loss patterns between diet groups in randomized weight loss trials strongly suggests that there is no generalizable advantage of one diet over another when it comes to long-term calorie intake or expenditure In contrast to the near equivalency of dietary carbohydrate and fat, dietary protein is known to positively influence body composition during weight loss 55 , 56 and has a small positive effect on resting metabolism Diets with higher protein may also offer benefits for maintaining weight loss 58 , particularly when the overall diet has a low glycemic index More research is needed to better understand whether these potentially positive attributes of higher protein diets outweigh concerns that such diets mitigate improvements in insulin sensitivity that are typically achieved with weight loss using lower protein diets Whereas long-term diet trails have not resulted in clear superiority of one diet over another with respect to average weight loss, within each diet group there is a high degree of individual variability and anecdotal success stories abound for a wide range of weight loss diets Some of this variability may be due to interactions between diet type and patient genetics 62 , 63 or baseline physiology such as insulin sensitivity 64 — Unfortunately, diet-biology interactions for weight loss have not always been reproducible 68 , 69 and likely explain only a fraction of the individual variability.

It is certainly possible that the patients who successfully lost weight on one diet would have been equally successful had they been assigned to an alternative diet. Such non-biological factors likely play a strong role in determining whether diet adherence is sustainable. Given the physiologic and environmental obstacles to long-term maintenance of lost weight described above, we offer the following recommendations for clinical practice and then present an alternative preferable depiction of the opening case example.

Long term behavioral changes and obesity management require ongoing attention. Even the highest quality short-term interventions are unlikely to yield continued positive outcomes without persisting intervention and support.

Several studies show that ongoing interaction with healthcare providers or in group settings significantly improves weight maintenance and long-term outcomes, compared with treatments that end after a short period of time Figure 3 70 , The importance of long-term intervention has been codified in the obesity treatment guidelines, which state that weight loss interventions should include long term comprehensive weight loss maintenance programs that continue for at least 1 year Weight management programs with a focus on maintenance of lost weight demonstrate improved long-term weight loss red curve compared to programs without maintenance visits blue curve.

Effects of four maintenance programs on the long-term management of obesity. J Consult Clin Psychol ;56 4 —; with permission. With respect to the case study at the start of this paper, the physician should not expect ongoing weight loss without ongoing support and interaction. Rather than asking Robert to turn things around on his own, the physician has an opportunity to reengage with Robert to offer guidance and support in a more intensive and regular manner than sending him off on his own for six months, or if this is not realistic in a busy primary care practice, he could refer Robert to an obesity medicine specialist, registered dietitian, comprehensive weight management clinic, or recommend that he engage in a community weight management group, such as the Diabetes Prevention Program now covered by Medicare for patients with prediabetes , or a commercial program, such as Weight Watchers.

Behavioral strategies for initiation of weight loss are described elsewhere in this volume []. Weight maintenance-specific behavioral skills and strategies help patients to build insight for long-term management, anticipate struggles and prepare contingency plans, moderate behavioral fatigue, and put into perspective the inevitable lapses and relapses of any long-term engagement. Although the research is mixed, several studies show improved weight loss outcomes in patients receiving weight maintenance-specific training, compared with those who only receive traditional weight loss training 76 — Strategies are discussed below for weight maintenance-specific counseling.

Unlike with weight loss, during which the external reward of watching the scale decrease and clinical measures e. Providers can point to the magnitude of weight that has been kept off, putting it into context in terms of average expected weight loss described below , as well as clinical improvements in risk factors, such as blood pressure and glycemic control.

This counseling often includes self-weighing and identifying weight thresholds that signal the need for reengaging with a support team or initiating contingency strategies; proactively developing plans and practicing strategies for managing and coping with lapses; problem solving to identify challenges, formulate solutions, and evaluate options; and building strategies for non-food activities and coping mechanisms, such as engaging in hobbies or mindfulness activities, to minimize counterproductive coping mechanisms, such as emotional eating.

Cycles of negative and maladaptive thoughts e. Helping patients to recognize and restructure the core beliefs and thought processes that underlie these patterns helps minimize behavioral fatigue and prevent or productively manage slips and lapses. Many tendencies that promote initial weight loss are unrealistic over the long term.

Much as a sprinter can run all-out for a short race, but not for the entirety of a marathon, expecting strict, all-out efforts and clear-cut, black-and-white outcomes over the lifelong management of obesity is a recipe for frustration and failure.

External, superficial rewards are unlikely to support the long term endurance needed for weight maintenance. For example, studies of financial rewards to incentivize behavioral changes, such as weight loss or tobacco cessation, yield initial benefits that invariably wane precipitously over time 80 , As an example, compared with difficulty of sticking to a strict low-fat or low-carb diet, which are often arbitrarily prescribed and of little personal significance to the patient, and therefore difficult to maintain, countless millions throughout the world rigorously stick to comparably strict kosher, halal, or vegan eating patterns, which are aligned with their religious, ethical, or other deeply held beliefs and values.

Similarly, prescribing daily gym visits to someone who hates the gym environment or gym activities is unlikely to be fruitful, whereas supporting patients to find more enjoyable physical activities, such as sports or group dance-exercise classes, increases the likelihood of continuing over time. Both patients and healthcare providers have wildly unrealistic expectations for weight loss outcomes. From a cognitive psychology perspective, a waning intervention effort may be due to disappointment in the degree of weight loss actually achieved 82 leading the patient to conclude that the effort is not worth the achieved benefits Although the published data is mixed on whether unrealistic outcomes will deter weight loss success, it stands to reason that excessive discrepancies between expectations and actual outcomes would be demoralizing and increase negative thoughts and self-blame which itself is associated with numerous negative health outcomes 85 , and may diminish long term persistence for continued behavioral change and weight loss maintenance.

We recommend advising patients about the physiologic challenges of long term weight loss and the degree of weight loss that can be realistically expected from behavioral interventions.

Nonetheless, positive outcomes of behavioral counseling extend beyond weight loss. Despite the modest weight losses associated with behavioral interventions, small weight losses can lead to impressive health improvements and risk factor reductions. These external motivations can move the weight loss needle in the short-run, but they rarely lead to long-lasting determination. As described in the section above, long term management is improved when motivations are aligned with personal values and preferences.

Helping patients shift their locus of motivation from weight loss alone to intrinsically meaningful areas, such as health improvement, can improve long term weight and behavioral outcomes For patients that do not achieve sufficient weight loss or health improvements with basic counseling in primary care settings, there are several opportunities to intensify therapy.

Consider referral to a registered dietitian, obesity medicine physician, or comprehensive weight management clinic, as well as targeted specialists such as a behavioral psychologist for patients with binge eating disorder or body dysmorphia. I actually see quite a lot of progress for your efforts. Few people lose that much weight and keep it off for three years. Some regain and relapse is inevitable — just like in other areas of life.

If we need, we can also consider additional strategies or treatments.