In my last few postings about the subject of weight loss I wrote that weight loss is a marathon, endurance event and not a sprint.  Much of the research into effective diets show that slow and gradual weight loss leads to long term losses.

Much has been said about the high protein, low carbohydrate diets including Atkins, Paleo and others but for most people these diets are very difficult to follow over the longterm.  Successful weight losers follow a diet over a long, long time and don’t revert back to bad habits.  Many observational studies looking at people who are successful with weight loss point out several common sense, but surprising tips:

  1. 98% of people who have successfully lost weight use a food diary for most days to keep track of what they eat.
  2. 78% of these “weight losers” eat breakfast
  3. 75% of them weigh themselves weekly (not daily)
  4. 62% of the “weight losers” watched less than 10 hours of TV per day (this includes screen time of all sorts!)
  5. 90% exercised an hour a day on most days of the week.  This was not strenuous cross-fit, tough bootcamp, grunting exercise, but activities like walking outdoors, group exercise and yoga.
I don’t think that they looked at these other factors, but adequate sleep and stress reduction are also important in assuring successful weight loss for most of us.  Catching your “Z’s” will let you lose the pounds!
Since working for a common goal is important to many people, we will be offering our Be Well-Sound Health members weight loss weekends where we put into action all of these successful tips so that we all can be “weight loser” winners!