Weight Loss Program Review

Diet plans: Best testing and clinical analyses

When it comes to the best weight-loss programs, there's no better way to sort fact from fiction than a long-term medical study. These studies make for dense reading, but they are the best sources of unbiased information on diet plans. Not all of the popular diets have been subjected to long-term clinical studies. In fact, most have not -- but we found solid research for Weight Watchers, the Atkins Diet, the Zone, Slim-Fast, Rosemary Conley Eat Yourself Slim, Dean Ornish Eat More, Weigh Less and Volumetrics from the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Archives of Internal Medicine, the New England Journal of Medicine, Obesity, A Research Journal and others.

In reviews published in the mainstream press, Health magazine gives us the best analysis of diet plans, evaluating dozens of popular weight-loss programs and using an expert panel to pick 10 as the healthiest options available. ConsumerReports.org also has a helpful comparative analysis that looks at diet plans and books, but the article hasn't been updated in several years. After identifying weight-loss plans that have solid scientific backing, user reviews at sites like Viewpoints.com, Epinions.com or DietsinReview.com are very helpful for gauging the opinions of regular dieters. These reviews provide information that is often missing in professional reviews, such as how easy the diet is to stick with or if the program actually provides good motivation and support.

From our research, we did uncover a couple of facts that apply across the board. First of all, exercise is a key component of successful weight loss for most dieters. While the latest research says that exercise alone might not help very much without cutting calories, the two in tandem is the best strategy. Exercise is also essential to keeping the weight off. Secondly, dieters who engage in long-term support, either in person or online, have a better chance of maintaining their weight loss than those who do not. While websites like eDiets.com have features that provide support, Weight Watchers is king when it comes to face-to-face meetings, and clinical studies show that in-person meetings trump Internet-based support when it comes to initiating and maintaining weight loss.

When it comes to the content of popular diets, new studies released in 2009 largely confirm the findings of previous researchers. Most scientific studies show that the majority of mainstream diets will lead to short-term weight loss -- as long as you stick with them. A University of Surrey study published in Public Health Nutrition followed 300 overweight or obese participants who were using the Atkins Diet, Weight Watchers, Rosemary Conley Eat Yourself Slim or Slim-Fast. Over the course of six months, all the participants lost a similar amount of weight (between 11 and 19 pounds), regardless of the diet they followed. This confirms what diet experts have long suspected -- weight loss is a simple formula of calories in versus calories out, so any diet that reduces calories will help you shed pounds. The tricky part is following the diet until you get to your goal weight. That's why finding a diet you can stick with is so important.

In research studies, Weight Watchers easily gets the best ratings for long-term success. That's not because its overall plan is significantly better or worse than others. Rather, Weight Watchers' foundation for group meetings and support leads to a far lower dropout rate, and its flexible eating plan allows participants to eat what they like in moderation. In repeated studies, participants were able to stick with Weight Watchers for a longer period of time. Other types of diets, such as Slim-Fast (which involves prepackaged foods, but no group support) had a lower dropout rate in the short term, but after four or six months, participants dropped out just as much as with other diets.

Among recent trends, The Mediterranean Diet and variations thereof are becoming accepted as a safe and healthy alternative to the traditional low-fat diet recommendation. Low-glycemic diets also get several picks in the reviews we read. And the oft-vilified Atkins Diet may be onto something -- the same two-year New England Journal of Medicine study that shows a Mediterranean diet to be an effective alternative to low-fat diets found that low-carb diets are also more effective for weight loss and heart-disease prevention than low-fat diets. While the low-carb diet that the study participants followed was based on the Atkins Diet, participants were advised to choose vegetarian sources of fat and protein and to avoid trans fats.

The Atkins Diet is opposed by the American Medical Association, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and the National Institutes of Health. This is mainly because the Atkins Diet plan is far outside the realm of traditional dietary advice, and the long-term effects of a high-fat diet on cardiac health are still unknown. Plenty of experts now say that low-carb diets are safe, at least in the short term, except for people with kidney problems. In the long term, low-carb dieters, like adherents of other weight-loss programs, are just as likely to lose weight if they stick to their diet, and also just as likely to gain it back when they stop the plan. All of the medical studies we found concluded with the same advice: the best diet is one that you can stick to. Note that diet pills are generally found to be ineffective; see the ConsumerSearch report on diet pills for more information.