Now, I will grant you that this is not a 5+ year study, but what interested me was that the majority of contestants kept losing weight after they were off the show. Which would suggest that a good exercise/eating regime that one can stick to (as opposed to a crash diet that is impossible/unhealthy to sustain longterm) does make a significant difference for a lot of people, not just in terms of health, but in terms of raw body weight.

Please show us a peer-reviewed study that proves YOUR contentions, namely:

1) the vast majority of obese people who started it couldn’t maintain the weight loss even though they stuck to the program (something with figures- caloric intake, LBM, BF %, etc.)

2) It was not a matter of willpower (i.e. it was some physiological change, like a massive metabolic slowdown, that caused them to regain the weight). Please provide figures (e.g. BMR before and after and the change).

I didnt start a new thread, that was ctl, and I have no intention of wading into that one because I’d rather be paid for my TA work than do it pro bono.

Elizabeth, I well understand that the people in this study met selection criteria, but these criteria are not even close to the extreme. Dean is the one who set teh standard of 50 lbs and 5 years, the criteria for this study fall well below that.

I havent seen anyone actually quote a study that supports Dean’s or Elizabeth’s assertions.

Scott, I’m with you. Part of the reason I find this study so compelling is precisely because they are very restrained in their assertions. They do, however, have results that ARE applicable to the argument, particularly the assertion by Dean that I quoted, and I do not see why the substantial data in this study should be breezily dismissed. The authors are not invalidating their study nor agreeing it is an extreme unrepresentative case, by their comments in the discussion above. A theory about Obesity needs to fit ALL the facts, and the facts clearly show that it is well within the human capability to lose more than 50 lbs and keep it off for 5 years plus, using only diet and excercize techniques. That was the original argument of impossibility made by Dean, and Elizabeth, and I think we have moved on from that ground since then.

Aziz Poonawalla’s last blog post..the Qur’an shooter

I have yet to see a SINGLE CITED REFERENCE FROM THE NAYSAYERS SUPPORTING THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF OBESE PEOPLE CANT LOSE WEIGHT. THIS IS THE CRUX OF YOUR ARGUMENT. THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS BACK IT UP.

Since you asked, check out the article you’re whining about. From the introduction:

Unfortunately, long-term follow-up indicates that most patients return to their baseline weights within 3-5 y after the end of treatment.

Most patients return to their baseline within 3-5y. Hmm… I wonder why… Well so do the authors of the article. In fact they conclude thus:

The NWCR is the largest study ever of individuals who were highly successful at long-term maintenance of weight loss. Although the large sample size and use of quantitative outcome measures are strengths of this study, several caveats are in order. First, the recruitment methods used (advertisements and mailings) are not likely to have resulted in random sampling of the general population of successful maintainers of weight loss, and so it is not clear to what extent the findings of this study can be generalized to all individuals successful at weight loss and maintenance.

The authors of the study are careful not to leap to the conclusion that you seem to be. The article isn’t supporting what you believe.

I know I didn’t author the article, but I did find it and provide the first analysis of it yesterday.  You ripping it off and calling it your own doesn’t make it yours. 

The least you could have done is give credit to who actually found the manuscript.

I have yet to see a SINGLE CITED REFERENCE FROM THE NAYSAYERS SUPPORTING THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF OBESE PEOPLE CANT LOSE WEIGHT.  THIS IS THE CRUX OF YOUR ARGUMENT.  THE LEAST YOU CAN DO IS BACK IT UP.  

It’s very easy to sit back and keep telling you opposition that what they’re providing is not enough.  Now we’re saying what you’ve provided is not enough.  All I’ve read is a single news article conveying some work done on Fruit Fly fat cells.  Last I checked the physiology of a fruit fly is drastically different from a human.  Maybe the physiology of  a fruit fly is more comparable to an obese human then?   Is that what you guys are trying to say?

So I take it your search for a study in which obese people are subjected to any behavioral intervention and achieve and maintain substantial weight loss is coming up empty?

It’s almost as though behavioral interventions don’t work.  Weird.

800 people would be a huge number if we started with a sample of randomly selected obese individuals from the population and showed that our intervention was able to get them all to become non-obese.  That’s not what this paper is about.  It’s about studying 800 of those rare individuals who have managed to lose weight, identified AFTER they have lost the weight.

As I said in an earlier thread, there are a substantial number of people who can run a mile in under five minutes.  There is a huge difference between taking 200 ordinary people and showing you can modify them so they can run a mile in under five minutes, and taking 200 people who *can* run a mile in five minutes and deciding that means that such individuals are not rare and therefore everyone should be able to do it.