Photo by Bob Gamble.

There is a very interesting article over on the fantastic GetFitSlowly.com today.

It summarizes a study that looked at 6,000 successful dieters who lost on average 70 pounds and kept it off six years. It’s the only large scale study of it’s kind and I think we can learn a lot from it.

From getfitslowly.com:

The study has identified seven elements that characterize the diet and exercise of these “losers”:

Basic stuff but it’s the opposite of what a lot of people promote for weight loss. I read daily about how you don’t have to limit calories to lose a lot of weight. It’s usually associated with the new health buzz word “lifestyle change”. People say you just need to “make healthier choices” because they don’t want to be blunt and say “don’t eat as many calories”. If you need to lose a lot of weight there is no way around it you have limit the amount of calories you consume.

Weighing daily is another cool tidbit. I think this helps as long an occasional daily fluctuation — as much as five pounds — doesn’t frustrate people but empower them (see number 7).

I suppose #6 is related to #4 but I think this study is showing its age. Now I think a real indicator is how much people stay away from the web. But then again, how is watching TV so much worse than reading light novels? That is an argument in and of itself; I don’t know who is worse the people who watch 5 hours of TV or a day or the people who brag about not ever watching TV. TV is often villianized when the real answer is for people to place the blame of excess snacking and/or lack of exercise squarely on themselves.

If you haven’t checked out GetFitSlowly.com you really should. It’s a very good read in general and the article I linked above goes into a lot more detail that I didn’t cover.