Is long term weight loss possible?

Arguments for
The registry in America.

Case studies

Wing and Phelan, 2005 - 20% of overweight individuals are successful at losing at least 10% of initial bodyweight and maintaining for at least a year

Arguments against
Proponents of HAES and FA often cite studies which demonstrate that significant long term weight loss is not possible.

The UK HAES website cites two papers in support of this argument.

The first, Confronting the failure of behavioural and dietary treatments for obesity, directly addresses this issue in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

The second, Medicare's search for effective obesity treatments: Diets are not the answer, was published in the journal American Psychologist.

Miller, 1999 examined the long-term success of diets over a period of 3-5 years.

Discussion
A key argument for long term weight loss focusses on the premise of the question itself. The argument that "95% of diets fail ... because they gain the weight back and then some" can be argued against directly if the reason for the weight gain is examined. In the majority of cases the 'diets' are considered temporary by their very nature, and involve a reduction in calorie intake which leads to weight loss. After the diet the practitioner would then go *back* to the previous dietary behaviours, which is what led them to gain weight before. a diet, then, can be seen as treating the symptom (weight gain) through calorie reduction and not the cause (the over-eating lifestyle) which led to it.

When method of weight loss is considered instead as a lifestyle change (ie longterm change to the habits and behaviours which led to the weight gain) its effectiveness is increased.

We must also ask the question of whether the diet itself has failed, or whether the person has failed to adhere to the diet. The two are very different results. If the diet has failed, we may come to the conclusion that it is not effective. If the person on the diet loses the willpower to continue, the discussion changes altogether.