This is the Weight and Healthcare newsletter. If you like what you are reading, please consider subscribing and/or sharing! I was just tagged into a Facebook conversation where someone was claiming that the findings of the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR) “prove that the claim that weight loss fails about 95% of the time is absolutely false,” and “show how to lose weight and keep it off”. I’ve been hearing this for a lot of years, and I was sad to find that it’s still going around, so let’s take a closer look at the NWCR and their findings.
I realize I’m an n=1, here. But I was in the NWCR, and totally weight cycling the whole time. The annual questionnaire did not ask any questions that would capture that, so from their POV I remained a success until I stopped filling out the surveys because I was frustrated by what info the surveys did NOT capture, AND because I realized it was time to stop fighting my body. They probably still count me as a success (as with “intent to treat” for clinical study dropouts), even though I gained the weight back gradually over the next decade.
All true, thank you for your clarity and your labor in making all this clear ONE MORE TIME.
Also note: one does not get removed from the registry for regaining weight. So if the "95% of dieters regain weight" is generally true here, you would not even know it, since once you are in the Registry after your one-year weight suppression feat, you are in. Secondly, the people who maintain weight suppression, however large or small that group is, are not necessarily doing practices we would want everyone to emulate, since they are indistinguishable from the very same practices that people with eating disorders do to suppress their weight. Hence my usual saying, "We prescribe for fat people what we diagnose as eating disordered in thin people."
I realize I’m an n=1, here. But I was in the NWCR, and totally weight cycling the whole time. The annual questionnaire did not ask any questions that would capture that, so from their POV I remained a success until I stopped filling out the surveys because I was frustrated by what info the surveys did NOT capture, AND because I realized it was time to stop fighting my body. They probably still count me as a success (as with “intent to treat” for clinical study dropouts), even though I gained the weight back gradually over the next decade.
All true, thank you for your clarity and your labor in making all this clear ONE MORE TIME.
Also note: one does not get removed from the registry for regaining weight. So if the "95% of dieters regain weight" is generally true here, you would not even know it, since once you are in the Registry after your one-year weight suppression feat, you are in. Secondly, the people who maintain weight suppression, however large or small that group is, are not necessarily doing practices we would want everyone to emulate, since they are indistinguishable from the very same practices that people with eating disorders do to suppress their weight. Hence my usual saying, "We prescribe for fat people what we diagnose as eating disordered in thin people."
Have you read Michelle May's approach using a weight neutral approach?