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According to a new review regarding diet studies, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig have shown to provide the best long-term results. Other programs on the other hand, weren’t studied enough to conclude if they are actually helpful. The results were published on Monday April 6 in Annals of Internal Medicine.
Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are also the two most popular commercial diets. According to this study, both programs showed a person could lose a significant amount of weight if he or she were to follow one of these two diets for at least 12 months.
The team, led by Dr. Kimberly Gudzune, an internist and researcher at Johns Hopkins University’s medical school analyzed data from 39 studies involving 11 well-known weight-loss programs that include counseling or support services along with the costs needed to acquire their products or gain access to their facilities.
Most of the analyzed studies based their research on comparing popular diets to the standard diet information and behavioral counseling offered by health care providers to patients needing to lose weight.
The team observed that in the long-run, Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig had better results compared to the other studied programs.
The review concluded that people following the Weight Watcher diet lose a minimum of 8 pounds and also manage to maintain their weight for the next year while those on the Jenny Craig diet usually manage to lose an average of 15 pounds.
Most dieters participating in the reviewed studies were still in the overweight category, even after the weight loss, but loosing between 3 and 5 percent of their initial weight is still encouraging as it is the first step of a long-term diet. Even though this target is usually unsatisfying when compared to a dieter’s ultimate goal, losing 3 to 5 percent of one’s initial weight is already beneficial as it lowers blood pressure and cholesterol levels.
The role of this review was to see which diets had the best long-term results. The team explained that due to the Affordable Care Act, obesity screening and counseling are more accessible to U.S. citizens. So, taking into consideration that about 75 percent of U.S. adults are overweight or obese, doctors need to know which diet programs are the most efficient in order to make the best recommendations.
Image Source: Fitness19
