Keeping weight off: what people do who never regain it

What the keepers have in common

The National Weight Control Registry in the United States has followed over 10,000 people since 1994 who lost at least 13 kilos and kept it off for a year or longer, on average 30 kilos over five years. Their common traits are unspectacular: 78 percent eat breakfast daily, 75 percent weigh themselves at least weekly, 90 percent move on average an hour a day, mostly walking, 62 percent watch less than ten hours of television a week, and most eat at weekends and on vacation much like otherwise. They do not eat perfectly, they eat consistently.

The body after weight loss

Whoever has lost ten kilos is not the same person with less weight. Basal metabolic rate sits for months 100 to 200 calories below what the formula says for the new weight. Leptin, the satiety hormone, is lower, ghrelin, the hunger hormone, higher, and both stay that way for up to a year. That is the biological explanation for the yo-yo effect: the body wants back. Whoever knows that plans for it: protein high, keep muscle, movement as daily life, and the expectation that the first year needs attention and it gets easier afterwards.

Six habits

First, weigh weekly, on the same day, in the morning. Second, a corridor: target weight plus two kilos is the limit from which the rules of the weight loss phase apply for two weeks. Third, a protein-rich breakfast that stabilizes the day. Fourth, an hour of movement a day, most of it walking, plus two strength sessions a week. Fifth, weekends like weekdays: same meals, same bedtimes, one exception meal instead of two exception days. Sixth, sleep over seven hours, because every short night raises the next day’s hunger.

Muscle as insurance

Whoever keeps training strength after weight loss and eats 1.4 grams of protein per kilo raises basal metabolic rate back to the expected value and above. Five kilos of muscle, which can grow in a year of strength training, are 65 calories a day and a figure that looks different at the same weight. Muscle is the reason some people can eat what they want: they have more engine.

When the weight comes back

Two kilos above the corridor means back to the five rules, two weeks, no drama. Five kilos means keep a log and find the cause: new job, less sleep, more alcohol, fewer steps. The return is almost never a collapse but a slow slide over months that a weekly look at the scale stops early.