Now the world's largest diet study has come up with a solution: the most effective way of maintaining weight loss is to eat a high protein/low glycaemic index (GI) diet, with lots of lean meat, beans and low-fat dairy products and fewer foods high in refined starch such as white bread and white rice.
This may be challenging for the attribute 'chance of maintaining weight loss', since effectiveness is difficult to predict a priori.
This was achieved by estimating the marginal rate of substitution between each prioritisation criterion and effectiveness (ie, chance of maintaining weight loss).
Potential surgery recipients were described by seven key characteristics or attributes: body mass index (BMI), presence of comorbid conditions, age, family history, commitment to lifestyle change, time on the surgical wait list and chance of maintaining weight loss following surgery.
Respondents also wanted to prioritise those who already have obesity-related comorbidity, with a family history of obesity, with a greater chance of maintaining weight loss, or who had spent a longer time on the wait list.
Randomised trials of interventions to maintain weight loss provided to initially obese adults (aged ≥18) after weight loss of ≥5% body weight with long term (≥12 months) follow-up of weight change (main outcome) were included.
The results indicate that participants achieved a mean 4.08% body weight reduction from month 0 to month 48, and 41.8% of individuals were able to maintain weight losses of at least 5% at follow-up.
They lose weight when fed on Spartina, fiddler crabs, or sunflower seeds alone, but a diet consisting of several of those items or of mealworms is adequate to maintain weight.
A substantial proportion of participants (41.80%) were able to maintain weight reductions of 5% or greater from baseline to follow-up.
