Maintaining Weight Loss: The Hard Part

The weight-loss industry tends to focus on strategies needed to shed pounds—but these may be different from what you need to maintain your new, lower weight.

For instance, as a study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found, people who succeeded at losing weight and keeping it off shared some common practices: They ate lots of fruits and vegetables, controlled their portions, planned what they would be buying before shopping, and read nutrition labels. But the successful weight maintainers had other tactics in their arsenal too: They were more likely to follow a consistent exercise routine, eat higher amounts of lean protein, reward themselves for sticking to their diet or exercise plan, and remind themselves why they need to control their weight.
Meanwhile, the National Weight Control Registry has found that successful weight-loss maintainers tend to be conscious of calories, have a less-varied diet, weigh themselves regularly, keep food diaries, watch less TV, and exercise a lot, among other winning strategies.

How maintaining is different from losing

Weight control is a process in which you fine-tune what works for you as you go. You may find, for example, that limiting calories works initially, but that you feel better and can more easily keep your calories down by eating a higher proportion of protein. You may also need a variety of exercise before you find a routine that works best for you. And you may have high motivation to lose weight in the beginning, but then find that over time, as enthusiasm wanes, you need to remind yourself of your goals more often, and reward yourself more often for staying on course.

Bottom line: Don't get discouraged. Most people fail several times before they “get it right.” It may take a few rounds before you succeed at keeping the weight off. The good news is that if you can keep the weight off for two years, chances are you’ll keep it off over the long term, according to the National Weight Control Registry. You may still have to work at it every day, but you gain more confidence in your ability, which goes a long way towards lasting success.

Should You Go Gluten-Free?

Gluten-free diets are in vogue, pitched as a healthy way to eat and as a way to lose weight. An Internet search of the term “gluten-free” yields some 90 million results. More than 8,000 gluten-free foods are found on Amazon.com; sales of such products soared to $28 billion last year. Gluten-free items have also surged on mainstream restaurant menus over the last two years, according to a new report from a food industry research and consulting firm.

There’s one very good reason to avoid gluten, the main protein in wheat (and rye and barley): if you have a gluten-related disorder, notably celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease affecting about one percent of Americans. (This is different from wheat allergy and is not an allergic reaction.) Gluten sensitivity is a more poorly defined and debatable condition that’s estimated to affect about six percent of the population. This is also not an allergic condition.

But for the great majority of people, there’s no evidence that going gluten-free has any health benefits, according to Arizona State University researchers, who published a commentary in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics in 2012 after reviewing the scientific literature.

Despite books and celebrities promoting it, a gluten-free diet is not a proven weight loss strategy, either. Gluten-free products are sometimes even higher in calories than their regular counterparts. And because most are made from less-healthful refined flour (albeit gluten-free flour), they tend to lack the fiber found in whole wheat and other whole grains that aids in weight control. Moreover, as the paper noted, some research suggests that wheat gluten itself may have health benefits (including triglyceride-lowering effects) and that going gluten-free may cause losses of beneficial intestinal bacteria.

Claims are also being made that celiac disease is on the rise due to changes in wheat breeding over the past century. But a study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry disputes the notion that today’s wheat varieties have more protein—and thus more gluten—than those from the early 20th century.
Bottom line: If you have chronic indigestion or other symptoms suggestive of gluten sensitivity, consult your doctor and get tested before going on a gluten-free diet. (Long-term avoidance of gluten can interfere with the diagnostic tests for celiac disease.) If you have a medical need to avoid gluten, do so; otherwise, a healthy diet is one that is rich in whole grains, including whole wheat. If you’ve gone gluten-free and feel better, it’s likely because you’ve cut out a lot of refined carbs and other junk foods, not because you’ve eliminated gluten.