Lifestyle Choices

A survey carried out in Britain suggests that about one in ten members of slimming clubs such as Weight Watchers and Slimming Magazine reach their target weight. However, it is difficult to understand what these figures actually mean. The clubs do not keep any information as to the weights of these women initially so there is no way of knowing how much weight they had to lose to be regarded as successes. In addition, the clubs cannot provide any information as to whether this includes all the women who drop out from lack of weight loss and whether it accounts for those who leave and then return for another try. It is possible that a woman who left and joined several times could be counted as many members.

One of the problems with assessing how successful dieters are at losing weight is evaluating how much these dieters wanted to lose in the first place. This raises the problem of whether they were obese, overweight or simply saw themselves as being fat. Most of the research into dieting successes has evaluated how much weight obese and overweight people lose. Assessing the effectiveness of dieting in average-weight women is difficult because such women tend either to diet on their own without medical or psychological help or their weight changes get lost amongst those of the obese.

Dr Feinstein from Yale Medical School in America predicted that only about 12 per cent of patients who seek medical help for weight loss actually lose weight. He further predicted that about two out of this twelve maintained this weight loss. Comparing these figures with those for people who do not seek medical help also raises several problems. This number could be higher than in the average population which tries to lose weight, since it could be argued that patients who seek outside help are more determined to succeed and are faced with a life-threatening problem. Conversely, it could also be argued that they also have a greater weight problem which is more difficult to solve, suggesting that this number is lower than that for the success rate of the general public.

Perhaps it is necessary to evaluate dieting success in obese and average-weight people individually.

Weight loss in the obese and overweight

Albert Stunkard predicted that ‘95 per cent of dieters regain weight five years after treatment’. Dr Thomas Wadden and his colleagues in Philadelphia carried out a study to test this prediction. They reported the results of a five-year study in which they followed up a group of seventy-six obese women who had attempted to lose weight. A third of these women had been given a very low calorie diet for four months, a third had been given behaviour therapy involving a low calorie diet, rewards for when they lost weight and help to change their attitudes and behaviour towards food for six months, and a third had been given both, again for six months.

The initial weight loss for all the women was very similar, and_.they lost between 24 and 36 pounds over a six-month period. The women receiving both the very low calorie diet and behaviour therapy lost more weight than the women receiving either of these alone. However, after a year 95 per cent of the women receiving only the very low calorie diet and 64 per cent of the women receiving behaviour therapy had regained some of the lost weight. The group who received both forms of treatment showed a 68 per cent weight regain. After five years the majority of the women (64 per cent) had regained all the weight they had lost. In fact some of the subjects had actually gained weight, although three women did maintain all of their weight loss.

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