Ig,

Reading that book (which I found in our public library) really helped me.
Though the focus is on the psychology, there's quite a bit on the
physiology, too.

It was interesting to me that the successful dieters lost weight on all
kinds of different regimens and diets, but that the researchers found the
common threads no matter what the food plan.

I also found it helpful to see that contrary to what the people selling gym
memberships tell you, exercise was helpful mostly after the weight was lost,
and it was not necessary for the weight loss to occur. Most women started
exercising after losing a lot of weight (like I did) and did very well.

I know so many people at the gym who work out four times a week and have
only lost 2 or 3 pounds all year (these are people who need to lose 30 or 40
lbs.) So I liked having it made clear that exercise is NOT the magic bullet
for weight loss, calorie restriction is. I also found it interesting to
look at the calorie levels at which people lost and maintained no matter
WHAT diet.

It's worth remembering that the book was written back when low carbing was
just going out of fashion so many of the long term diet success stories in
the book were low carbers.
--
Jenny - Low Carbing for 5 years. Below goal for weight. Type 2 diabetes,
hba1c 5.7 .
Cut the carbs to respond to my email address!

Jenny's new site: What they Don't Tell You About Diabetes
http://www.geocities.com/lottadata4u/

Jenny's Low Carb Diet Facts & Figures
http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/

Looking for help controlling your blood sugar?
Visit http://www.alt-support-diabetes.org/...0Diagnosed.htm


"Ignoramus13725" wrote in message
...
I am reading a book _Keeping it Off_ by Robert Colvin and Susan
Olson. This is an old book from 1985, I bought it used from Amazon.

The book is excellent and a summary of it is available at

http://www.geocities.com/jenny_the_bean/success.htm

The book is a great read and I highly recommend it. It describes what
is common amongst successful maintainers, which are defined as people who

- lost over 20% of body weight
- kept it off for 2 years
- are not more than 5 lbs away from their lowest weight

The discuss the traits amongst those successful people, how they think
about weight loss, what they do, what they do not do etc.

There are very few books about weight maintenance, probably because so
few people can get to the point where they need to maintain weight,
and even fewer of them actually maintain the loss. According to
authors, only 2% of those who started dieting can maintain
successfully for 2 years.

Unfortunately, the authors are psychologists, and looked at those
successful dieters from only psychological point of view. (I am not
done with the book yet). I wish they tried to look at the somatic
differences, if any, between successful and unsuccessful dieters.

It also does not do a good enough job at comparing those successful
people with controls who have not managed to be as successful. So,
they could fall into a trap of describing their common traits that did
not make a difference. Both of them had prior clinical experience with
"treating" obese dieters, with little (average) success, so,
hopefully, they could detect those success traits based on their
experience.

All in all, it is a great common sense book that describes what works.

The great majority of maintainers lost weight on their own, not on
any sort of commercial programs. All of them had an epiphany at some
point, which has been my experience exactly. They are all very aware
of their current weight and they actively manage it. Again, my
experience. They moved away from food obsessions and food takes little
place in their life, which I cannot say yet about myself, although it
has been getting a tad better later.


i