Many Americans Avoid Regaining Lost Weight :

Many Americans manage not to regain the weight they lose, a new study has found. Researchers looked at data from a U.S. government health survey. They focused on 1,310 men and women who had weighed 10% less than their all-time high a year before the survey. A majority of these people had stayed within 5% of that low weight from the year before. People who exercised and spent less time watching TV were most likely to keep the weight off. Reuters Health news service reported on the study. It was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

What Is the Doctor's Reaction?

Helping patients to lose weight and keep it off is one of the most important things that all doctors can do. Everybody knows that keeping a healthy weight is the key to preventing heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure. It really makes a difference to everyday life, too. People at a healthy weight have fewer problems from arthritis, breathe more easily, and may feel better about their bodies. So why is it so hard?

We live in a world that emphasizes sitting down and eating over more active choices. We spend a lot of time in our cars, at our computers, and in front of the TV. People are busy and may not make good choices about food or exercise. In some cases, people cannot afford or cannot travel to buy food that might be more nutritious and lower in calories and fat. Well over half of American adults are over their healthy body weights.

A new study offers some helpful advice about how people manage to keep the weight off. The bottom line is that it's not easy – but it can be done!

A team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) looked at data from the National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES). Parts of this study have looked at Americans' health habits since the 1970s. In this part of the study, researchers focused on more than 1,000 adults who were overweight and who had already lost weight.

The great news from the study is that almost 6 in 10 people who lost weight were able to keep it off for a year. Almost 8% continued to lose. The people who managed to keep weight off continued to exercise. Some exercised an hour a day three times a week, but the benefits were the same in people who did more moderate exercise.

Unfortunately, about 1 in 3 of the people who responded to the study gained back a significant amount of weight. Those people were much less likely to exercise and much more likely to spend more than 4 hours of personal time daily in front of the TV or computer.

There are some limitations to a survey study like this one. First, we don't really know how people lost weight. Some may have done it through a program, others on their own, and still others without being aware at all. This study does not yet help us know if different groups of people might have different challenges with respect to weight loss.

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