The most successful individuals, including 41% of the total, dropped an average of 12.9% of their body weight over the course of a 25-month research. Their customized regimens placed a strong emphasis on durable improvements and nutritional education.
Successful Dietary Strategies
A study that involved participants in a self-directed dietary education program found that those who lost the most weight over a 25-month period also consumed higher amounts of fiber and protein. For diet regimens to be sustainable over time, personalization and adaptability were also essential.
A study report published in Obesity Science and Practice found that at the one-year point, 41 percent of individuals who were successful dieters had dropped 12.9% of their body weight, whereas the remaining study sample had lost slightly more than 2% of their beginning weight.
The Individualized Diet Improvement Program
The researchers, Manabu T. Nakamura, a professor of nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said that the dieters were part of the Individualized Diet Improvement Program (iDip), which increases dieters’ knowledge of key nutrients through intensive dietary education sessions and data visualization tools. This allows dieters to create a personalized, safe, and effective weight-loss plan.
According to Nakamura, “personalization and flexibility are essential in developing programs that maximize dieters’ success at losing weight and keeping it off.” Achieving sustainable dietary change—which differs from person to person—is necessary to keep a healthy weight. Participants can test out different dietary variations using the iDip approach, and the skills and knowledge they gain throughout weight loss serve as the cornerstone for long-term maintenance.
The cornerstones of iDip include consuming 1,500 calories or fewer per day, as well as increasing consumption of protein and fiber.
Data Visualization Tools and Dietary Guidelines
The iDip team developed a unique, two-dimensional quantitative data visualization tool that graphs food densities of protein and fiber per calorie and gives a goal range for each meal, based on the Institutes of Medicine’s dietary guidelines. The dieters developed a customized plan, starting with the meals they usually ate and increasing their daily intake of protein to about 80 grams and fiber to around 20 grams.
Relationships Between Consumption of Fiber, Protein, and Loss of Weight
Using Wi-Fi equipped scales to monitor the participants’ eating patterns and weights, the researchers discovered a substantial inverse relationship between the percentage of protein and fiber consumed and the weight loss of dieters.
“The evidence clearly indicates that optimizing the safety and effectiveness of weight reduction diets requires increasing protein and fiber intake while concurrently reducing calories,” stated Mindy H. Lee, the first author, a U of I alumna who was a graduate student and registered dietitian-nutritionist for the iDip program at the time.
The Role of Protein in Preserving Lean Mass
According to Nakamura, maintaining lean mass is crucial when cutting weight, particularly when utilizing medications for weight loss.
“Injectable weight loss medications have become more and more popular recently,” Nakamura stated. “However, unless protein intake is increased during weight loss, using these medications when food intake is severely limited will cause serious side effects of muscle and bone loss.”
Nine men and thirteen women, out of the total 22 participants, finished the program. The age range of the majority of dieters was 30-64. The participants stated that they had tried to lose weight at least twice before. Additionally, they had a wide range of comorbidities: 36% had hypertension and/or sleep apnea, 50% had skeletal issues, and 54% had excessive cholesterol. The study also found that the dieters reported diagnoses of depression, cancer, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and diabetes.
Impact of Depression on Weight Loss
Compared to dieters without depression, who dropped 8.39% of their beginning weight, the seven who reported having a diagnosis of depression lost much less weight—roughly 2.4% of their starting weight. The researchers discovered that there was no discernible difference in weight loss between patients who had other comorbidities, between participants who were younger and older, or between males and women.
According to a body composition analysis, dieters lost little muscle mass and an average of 7.1 kg of fat during the six-month period while maintaining their lean body mass. The study found that 78% of the weight lost by those who lost more than 5% of their initial weight was fat.
Long-Term Fat and Weight Loss Results
In summary, at the 15-month mark, the participants’ average body weight decreased from 42.6 kg at the start of the program to 35.7 kg. Similarly, the researchers discovered that the dieters’ waists shrank by roughly 7 centimeters after six months and by a total of 9 cm at 15 months.
The team observed a significant relationship between weight loss at three and twelve months and the amount of protein and fiber dieters consumed.
The substantial correlation indicates that while those who struggled to adopt sustainable dietary patterns early on seldom succeeded in making dietary changes in the later months, Nakamura said, “participants who were able to develop sustainable dietary changes within the first three months kept losing weight in the subsequent months.”
The authors postulated that this trend might possibly have been linked to the early success of certain dieters in losing weight, which may have increased their drive and program adherence.
