Successful weight loss requires a three-pronged approach: changing your behavior, altering your diet, and increasing your physical activity. Permanent alterations in your lifelong attitudes toward diet and exercise are the keys to successful weight management. You must be motivated enough to change habits not for a few weeks or months, but for a lifetime. The importance of this cannot be underestimated. The desire to lose weight must come from within.

Commercial weight-loss programs can be effective tools for weight loss, but you do need to stick with the program for at least three months to see benefits. That was the conclusion of a one-year study of men and women enrolled in the Jenny Craig Platinum program.

After a month, 73 percent of the 60,164 people who joined the program were still enrolled. The number dropped to 42 percent at three months and 22 percent at six months. Only 7 percent remained at one year.

For those who stuck it out, weight loss was substantially greater. Men and women who lasted a year lost 13-16 percent of their initial body weight, compared with only a 1 percent loss in those who dropped out in the first month. Men and women who stayed in the program for at least three months lost about 8 percent of their baseline weight.

A loss of 5-10 percent of body weight can lead to significant reductions in blood pressure, cholesterol levels, and other conditions associated with overweight or obesity. But there’s a good chance that the three-month dropouts gained back the lost weight by the end of the year. Nonetheless, the longer you can stay in a commercial weight-loss program, the more weight loss you’re likely to achieve. The study was funded by an unrestricted research grant from Jenny Craig and reported in the International Journal of Obesity (online edition June 6, 2006).

Used with permission. Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine, Health After 50 Newsletter, http://www.johnshopkinshealthalerts.com/health_after_50/main_landing.html,  posted February 27, 2008.