This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Dieters more likely to hit clinically meaningful vs. personal weight-loss targets

Add topic to email alerts

Receive an email when new articles are posted on

Please provide your email address to receive an email when new articles are posted on .

Subscribe

Added to email alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

You've successfully added to your alerts. You will receive an email when new content is published.

Click Here to Manage Email Alerts

Back to Healio

We were unable to process your request. Please try again later. If you continue to have this issue please contact customerservice@slackinc.com.

Back to Healio

Obesity 2011

Many customers shed 5% to 10% of their initial weight after using a commercial weight-loss program, yet they often failed to meet their own personal weight-loss goals, researchers found.

"Persons seeking weight loss often desire reductions that far exceed the typical results for their selected weight-loss method," they wrote. "Modest reductions (5%-10% of initial weight) may not be perceived as successful despite being clinically meaningful."

To assess the difference between objective and subjective weight loss, the researchers evaluated 103,693 overweight and obese customers (mean age, 46.9 years; mean BMI, 34.3) who used Nutrisystem, a commercial weight-loss program involving home-delivery of portion-controlled foods from 2008 to 2010. Customers reported an average weight-loss goal of 54 lb, translating to about 23.9% of their baseline weight, the researchers said.

At 3 months, only 4.5% of participants achieved their desired weight loss, according to study results. The researchers said those who were successful in this outcome aimed for significantly smaller weight reductions compared with those who did not reach their personal goals (13.8% vs. 24.4% of initial body weight, respectively; P<.001). Men also appeared more likely than women to hit their target weight loss.

Clinically meaningful weight loss, however, occurred much more frequently, they said. Data show that 33.3% of participants lost 10% of their baseline body weight and even more (79.4%) lost 5% of their initial weight after 3 months. These trends also persisted at 6 months, at which point only 11% had met their subjective weight-loss goals, whereas 86% and 63.4% had lost 5% and 10% of their baseline body weights, respectively.

"Because weight loss goals tend to be unrealistic, falling short of those goals doesn't necessarily mean that the effort was a failure," the researchers said. "The typical result in this study was a clinically meaningful weight loss."

For more information:

• Fabricatore AN. 298-P. Presented at: the 29th Annual Meeting of the Obesity Society; Oct. 1-5, 2011; Orlando, Fla.

Disclosure: The researchers are all employees of Nutrisystem.

Follow EndocrineToday.com on Twitter.