1959

Trigger warning; sorry, but this is another of those weight loss dieting 'efficacy' so dieting's mentioned throughout, so skip it if you've had more than enough.

The much quoted 95% of diets fail was based on a 1959 survey/study of a hundred patients attending the nutrition clinic of a New York hospital for a weight loss diet, as they came. It included those who dropped out and did not as far as I can tell control for anything.

"Stunkard and McLaren-Hume's 1959 study of 100 obese individuals, which indicated that, 2 y after treatment, only 2% maintained a weight loss of 9.1 kg (20 lb) or more"

That leaves us with a probabilistic figure which can only amount to out of every 100 weight loss diet attempts, 95 will fail; that is return to starting weight or there abouts.

Hundreds of papers on treatment for obesity have been published in the past 30 years. Most, however, do not give figures on the outcome of treatment, and of those that do, most report them in such a way as to obscure the outcome of treatment of individual patients. So me authors, for example, report the total number of patients and the pounds lost without making clear. . .

It was conducted by Dr. Albert Stunkard and a dietitian called Mavis McLaren-Hume its conclusion;

"Most obese persons will not stay in treatment, most will not lose weight, and of those who do lose weight, most will regain it.''

Pretty much sums it up for me even if diets were a viable option, if the patients cannot take the 'treatment' it cannot be expected to be the solution, regardless. 

Now I should clarify, what does not working mean?

Well, the remit of diets is to expend what is deemed 'excess weight' i.e. you use up 50lbs in reduced intake and/or exercise and that is that.

As we found out, it isn't, that's the first major fail-rebound- that you have to keep monitoring your eating to stave it off is a major fail because it is not explain by the theory of extra weight=extra calories. It shows diets don't really understand how the body functions or it would have anticipated or have had an answer for it.

The study ended after a 2 year period and by that time only 2% of people had maintained a 20lb weight loss, not enough to make any person in the obese category 'acceptable'.
The study set out to examine two assumptions the claims that dieting was effective and harmless, these suppositions came from studies from the preceeding 30 year period, so the idea that belief in diets/calorie manipulation is a product of our current times is false.

This has been repeatedly been debunked, all to no avail not because people can't accept it, but because the implications of accepting it are unacceptable. So it keeps coming around again because it fits in with the medical monopoly's underlying premise of treatment.
The support given to weight loss dieting should have sparked attempts to disprove it with a new figure backed up by a large scale better controlled clinical study to replace it.

In spite of the fact this small study from 1959 which should have become obsolete years ago, the multi billion pound slimming industry, government scientists, big pharma obesity scientists haven quite managed to counter it yet. Such is the strength of the counter case.

So this ludicrously low key preliminary finding has assumed an importance way above its standing because it has not been challenged with anything better.

Take a look at the table featured (I'd avoid the text unless you're desperate for another banal lecture in weight shame) on US weight stats from 1950 onwards and see if you can find any reverse trajectory, of any kind.

Stunkard himself did not expected it to be debunked long ago, so have all who've encountered it over subsequent decades;

''That was state of the art in 1959,'' he added. ''I've been sort of surprised that people keep citing it; I know we do better these days.'

Instead both reality and fact based studies merely underline it. What is telling is its inclusion of everyone along the process. It is assumed that everyone can lose weight and people fall at the last fence, rebound/ regain. When in fact failure starts virtually immediately. I know people who are more or less diet proof, no matter whether the moment a diet starts they develop a kind of extreme panic response which builds to the point where they can stand it only for a matter of hours or less.

I fit close to that type of diet proof person, the difference is, I was tenacious and wouldn't give up, assuming this was just my greed talking, turns out that this pushing made me mentally ill, something which lasted until I not only stopped dieting, but promised myself fervently and repeatedly that I would never do to myself again.

Anyway, those who insist on believing in diets, finally got fed up with evidence failing to contradict Stunkard and McLaren-Hume, decided to try another approach;

Since then, nearly all studies of weight-loss recidivism have followed patients in formal hospital or university programs, because they are the easiest to identify and keep track of. But people who turn to such programs may also be the most difficult cases, and may therefore have especially poor success rates

My emphasis. Because of course those people are left out of the obesity figures aren't they?

Having given up on fat people becoming slim a new approach to directly focus on weight loss diet outliers is being taken. Something called the weight loss diet registry which solicits people who remain reduced.

Two researchers Dr. Wing and Dr. James O. Hill of the University of Colorado aim to make a long term study of them, basically a survey of people To study them long term to see what can be learned from them about how to remain in a state of semi anorexia.

Something which is not only an undesirable pointless waste of time, on those terms any way, it ignores those who are in too much pain, discomfort or have mobility issues to be able to have a life wasting energy. Not to mention someone like me who become chronically depressed by my body's compensatory adaptation to energy restriction. Something which defeats efforts at dieting as ones ability to move is curtailed tremendously not to mention developing chronic compensatory overeating.

None of this shows dieting works in itself or to the standard required from fat people on the contrary it has clearly ceded that ground by extensive lowering of standards of weight loss and maintenance to only a year.

It wasn't really motivated by the emotional upset of dieting not fulfilling the promise invested in it, which is that we can all choose to be thin, so pretty much 100% efficacy;

''It was really to convince ourselves and convince the world that there are people who are successful, and then to learn from them,'' Dr. Wing said.

This is straw as 95/8% is not 100%, however it is clearly not what is required if the true aim is reducing levels of weight and fatness.

So Stunkard's figure remains and is best critiqued with a new figure garnered from a study featuring the real context of weight loss dieting- everyone over a BMI of 25 reducing to below that, permanently.

Or better still another approach which actually works.