REGISTRY TRACKS THOSE WHO’VE SHED POUNDS AND KEPT THEM OFF

Dallas Morning News
November 2, 2004

Anyone who has lost weight knows it's no piece of cake. It's a sweet victory worth savoring. Just ask Raynelle Shelley and Van Neinast. Between them, the two North Texans tried almost every diet out there: Weight Watchers, Atkins, diet pills, Jenny Craig, grapefruit diets, starvation, liquid diets. "Any quick-fix weight-loss diet in any magazine I picked up – you name it, and I have tried it," says Ms. Shelley, 35, of Roanoke. Successful weight losers report making substantial changes in eating and exercise habits to lose weight and maintain their losses.

Registrants consume about 1,400 calories a day on average. Women eat about 1,300 calories, men about 1,700. Of the 4,800 registry members, 77 percent are female.
Participants expend about 2,800 calories in exercise a week. That translates to an estimated 400 calories daily and 60 to 90 minutes of exercise. Walking is the most frequently cited activity.

The average registrant has lost about 65 pounds and has maintained that loss for more than five years.

Two-thirds of these successful weight losers were overweight as children, and 60 percent report a family history of obesity.

About half of participants lost weight on their own without any type of formal program or help. The National Weight Control Registry is a collaborative venture between Dr. James Hill of the University of Colorado and Dr. Rena Wing of Brown University.
You may be able to join if you have successfully maintained a 30-pound weight loss for a minimum of one year, and you're 18 or older.

There is no cost to join the registry, and names are always kept confidential. "It all worked for a while," says Mr. Neinast, 44, of Richardson, "but I would put on more weight than I'd lost as soon as I stopped 'the diet. ' "

Today, both can claim the title of successful losers – Ms. Shelley for six years, Mr. Neinast for two – and they're sharing the solutions they found as participants in the National Weight Control Registry.

The registry isn't a new wonder treatment. It's a record of about 4,800 people nationwide who have kept off at least 30 pounds for one year or longer. The research study is in its 10th year of monitoring registrants with an extensive annual questionnaire.

"We collect information about their eating habits, exercise behaviors, and we follow them," says Suzanne Phelan, a registry co-investigator and assistant professor at Brown Medical School in Providence, R. I. "Some have just recently joined. Some joined way back when. "
Since then, the researchers have published their findings in journals including the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Obesity Research.

"We want to learn about these people and how they're doing – how they're able to be so successful," says Dr. Phelan, who is also a psychologist.

"They use a variety of different strategies to lose weight," she says. Some count calories. Some count fat. Others stick to a liquid formula.

"But the interesting thing is: They're very, very similar in how they're keeping the weight off," she says. "They're watching their total caloric intake, and they're engaging in high levels of physical activity every day. And they're also consuming a low-fat diet.

"Most of them are eating breakfast on a daily basis. Maybe that's part of their success. "
Maintaining a stable and healthy weight requires a shift in mind-set. "People tend to think of a diet as something that you go on and off. Weight control is something you do long-term," says psychologist Rena Wing, one of the registry's two principal investigators and director of the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at Brown Medical School and the Miriam Hospital in Providence, R. I.

So how and why did registrants get started? Many experienced "a medical event that triggered their weight loss," Dr. Phelan says. Their doctor might have been the catalyst – or an illness, such as diabetes, prompted them to make a dramatic change.

For Mr. Neinast, the desire struck in September 2001, when his family took a weekend trip.

"I decided I was tired of feeling fat," he recalls. "I didn't have any energy, and I never really felt good. " "Just knowing that someone is interested in the details of my maintenance," he says, "is a motivating factor.