More than a third of American adults are overweight or obese, making commercial weight loss a multi-million dollar industry. But are they worth the money? How will they affect my AFS health plan? According to a study conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, most of them are not. The findings are published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Many doctors and clinicians encourage weight loss programs for their overweight patients, sometimes suggesting commercial weight loss programs. However, there is limited reliable data on which programs are effective. Researchers hope the findings of this study will give healthcare practitioners more reliable information on the programs that are likely to give their patients the best results.
The researchers reviewed data from more than 4,200 trials of more than 30 weight programs. The data came from two databases of medical literature, as well as studies conducted by the weight loss programs.
The researchers followed the review with a randomized controlled trial. Participants of this stage of the study were randomly assigned to either a commercial weight loss program or weight loss counseling alone. Participants followed their assigned program for at least 12 weeks.
John Hopkins Division of Internal Medicine Dr. Jeanne Clark, study co-author, explains the goal of the study is to help people gain the benefits of losing weight, including lowering blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol, and reducing their risk of disease. All of these are long term goals, and yo-yo dieting, or losing weight only to regain it in a few months, is ineffective at improving long term health. This is why it’s important to identify programs that can help overweight individuals to lose weight, and also to keep it off long term.
The researchers found the most effective programs to be Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and NutriSystem. Programs like these are high intensity and involve goal-setting, nutrition information, counseling, and self-monitoring. Though these programs are effective, most individuals only achieved modest weight loss of 3-5% more than the control group.
Atkins diet also proved promising, with participants following the program losing more weight after 6-12 months than those in the counseling group.
Participants who used low-calorie meal replacements lost more weight after 4-6 months than the counseling group, but one long-term study of these programs showed no benefits after 12 months.
The researchers were unable to reach a definite conclusion on the effectiveness of such programs as SlimFast, eDiets, and Biggest Loser.
Study authors point out that there have been few studies on the effectiveness of these studies over longer than a year and more extensive studies need to be done.
Weight gain is common as adrenal fatigue progresses to the late stages. Central weight gain is especially problematic. This usually occurs concurrently with increasing fatigue. Both are unwelcome. Many sufferers with AFS health complaints are pre-occupied with trying to lose weight, and for good reason. Despite heroic efforts short of starvation, the end result invariably is failure for meaningful weight loss. The key clinical mistake is the failure to understand the physiological basis of underlying weight gain. It must be realized that during adrenal fatigue, the body is trying to hang on to as much weight as it can as a survival mechanism to conserve energy. Any attempt to deprive the body of this weight as a survival tactic generally fails. The key to successful long term weight loss is to first support the adrenals with efforts such as an adrenal health diet. When the adrenals are strong, the body will automatically rebalance its internal metabolic pathways for easier weight loss. Adrenal crashes are avoided. We see many people come to us wanting to lose weight and support adrenal function at the same time. Our advice is simple: work on the adrenals first, and weight loss will happen. Work on weight loss only and the adrenals will get worse over time.
For readers who are interested in AFS health and recovery and desire to learn more about specific dietary options that are available, an extensive literature on the topic of Adrenal Fatigue dietary guidelines are accessible at DrLam.com. It is vital to understand how the adrenal glands trigger our bodies to retain excess calories in times of stress in order to see the link between adrenal health and weight gain. When the body experiences what is known as the NeuroEndoMetabolic (NEM) Stress Response, there is a shutdown of the digestive tract, increased blood-sugar levels, a spike in cholesterol, and the body enters a state of survival in which it locks fat cells in place for future use. Just as important as proper dieting for adrenal health, it is imperative that external stressors be mitigated to better control the long term damage from adrenal overactivity.
