Research
Adherence
Conventional weight loss interventions rarely result in long-term weight maintenance, with the majority of individuals regaining lost weight.
Do not expect to maintain significant weight loss long-term through diet and exercise alone. Focus on health behaviors instead.
StrongRefutesVERY_HIGH confidence
Long-term follow-up studies document that the majority of individuals regain virtually all of the weight that was lost during treatment, regardless of whether they maintain their diet or exercise program
Why this rating
Based on large-scale studies like the Women's Health Initiative and NIH panels.
Source
Weight Science: Evaluating the Evidence for a Paradigm Shift
Linda Bacon et al. · Nutrition Journal · 2011
DOI 10.1186/1475-2891-10-9
narrative_reviewCited 706×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- A Health at Every Size (HAES) intervention, which focuses on weight-neutral health behaviors rather than weight loss, produces statistically and clinically relevant improvements in physiological, behavioral, and psychosocial outcomes compared to conventional weight-loss treatments.Good
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