The National Weight Control Registry Tracks Successful Weight Losers
I’m a successful weight loser. Three years ago, I lost around 35 lbs., and I’ve kept it off for the last two years. I thought I had discovered a secret. But today I read about how I did it online in Scientific American. The article “Dropping Weight … And Keeping it Off” came out two years ago (but I linked to it for the first time just in the last hour).
The article quotes James Hill, a psychologist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. He’s one of the founders of the National Weight Control Registry, which is maintained by Kaiser-Permanente. (Although I’m a member of the HMO operated by KP in the mid-Atlantic, I didn’t get on the program through them but discovered how to do it on my own.) Here’s what Hill told the reporter:
The key, [Hill] continues, is exercise. “Activity becomes the driver; food restriction doesn’t do it. The idea that for the rest of your life you’re going to be hungry all the time—that’s just silly.” People in the registry get an average of an hour of physical activity every day, with some exercising for as much as 90 minutes a day. They also keep the fat in their diet relatively low, at about 25 percent of their calorie intake. Nearly all of them eat breakfast every day, and they weigh themselves regularly.
The basic idea, I think, is that you cannot be on a diet forever. You can’t be hungry all the time for the rest of your life. So what do you do? You exercise. You increase your caloric expenditure above your caloric intake. That’s how I did it. I try for a extra 600 calories of energy burn on 5 or 6 days a week, through bike riding, running, or swimming. I usually manage a minimum of 400 calories (about an hour of vigorous activity) and sometimes get up to 1200 (about 3 hours).
Exercise, unlike dieting, IS something you can do for the rest of your life, and it’s something you should do. Plus it helps you feel good.
The other thing I do is keep a record of everything I eat. I use an Excel spreadsheet. It’s easier than plain paper. Since I eat much the same things week in and week out, I just keep a list of the foods on the spreadsheet. Then I cut-and-paste from the list into a area of the document that automatically totals my intake and tracks my daily carb, fat, protein and fiber. I make entries after every meal and snack. And I add a new sheet each day by using the “Copy Sheet” command. I’ve kept the files since I started 3-4 years ago.
Today I submitted a request online to join the National Weight Control Registry. I think I qualify for membership, which is open to successful weight losers. If I’m accepted, I’ll offer to send them my spreadsheets.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 2:09 pm and is filed under Medicine and Science. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.