I'd say keep them under 50

Billy wrote:
| Avoid big changes because they are difficult to maintain. Count your
| carbs, and try to keep them under 100 g or less.
| ----
|
| Scientific American
| February 2011
|
| How to Fix the Obesity Crisis by David H. Freedman
| p. 40 - 47
|
| FROM BIOLOGY TO BRAIN p.44
|
| THE MOST SUCCESSFUL WAY to date to lose at least modest amounts of
| weight and keep it off with diet and exercise employs programs that
| focus on changing behavior. The behavioral approach, tested over
| decades, involves making many small, sustainable adjustments in eating
| and exercise habits that are prompted and encouraged by the people and
| the rest of the environment around us.
|
| . . . To combat obesity, behavioral analysts examine related
| environmental influences: Which external factors prompt people to
| overeat or to eat junk food, and which tend to encourage healthful
| eating? In what situations are the behaviors and comments of others
| affecting unhealthful eating? What seems to effectively reward eating
| healthfully over the long term? What reinforces being active?
| Behavior-focused studies of obesity and diets as early as the 1960s
| recognized some basic conditions that seemed correlated with a greater
| chance of losing weight and keeping it off: rigorously measuring and
| recording calories, exercise and weight; making modest, gradual
| changes
| rather than severe ones; eating balanced diets that go easy on fats
| and
| sugar rather than dropping major food groups; setting clear, modest
| goals; focusing on lifelong habits rather than short-term diets; and
| especially attending groups where dieters could receive encouragement
| to
| stick with their efforts and praise for having done so.
|
| Studies back the behavioral approach to weight loss. A 2003 review
| commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human
| Services found that "counseling and behavioral interventions showed
| small to moderate degrees of weight loss sustained over at least one
| year"‹a year being an eon in the world of weight loss. An analysis of
| eight popular weight-loss programs published in 2005 in the Annals of
| Medicine found Weight Watchers (at that time in its pre-2010
| points-overhaul incarnation) to be the only effective program,
| enabling
| a 3 percent maintained body-weight loss for the two years of the
| study.
| Meanwhile a 2005 JAMA study found that Weight Watchers, along with the
| Zone diet (which, like Weight Watchers, recommends a balanced diet of
| protein, carbohydrates and fat), achieved the highest percentage (65
| percent) of one-year diet adherence of several popular diets, noting
| that "adherence level rather than diet type was the key determinant of
| clinical benefits." A 2010 study in the Journal of Pediatrics found
| that
| after one year children receiving behavioral therapy maintained a body
| mass index that was 1.9 to 3.3 lower than
| children who did not. (BMI is a numerical height-weight relation in
| which 18.5 is held to be borderline underweight and 25 borderline
| overweight.) The Pediatrics report noted that "more limited evidence
| sugges ts that these improvements can be maintained over the 12 months
| after the end of treatments." A 2010 study in Obesity found that
| continuing members of Take Off Pounds Sensibly (TOPS), a national,
| nonprofit behaviorally focused weight-loss organization, maintained a
| weight loss of 5 to 7 percent of their body weight for the three years
| of the investigation. The U.K.'s Medical Research Council last year
| declared that its own long-term study had shown that programs based on
| behavioral principles are more likely to help people take and keep the
| weight off than other approaches. (The study was funded by Weight
| Watchers, but without its participation.)