Yet another study that shows that long term significant weight loss is not achievable for most people.

nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2007448

When are they going to stop wasting money on this crap?

And this time, the idea is to study the “effectiveness” of “high-intensity, lifestyle-based program for obesity treatment delivered in primary care clinics in which a high percentage of the patients were from low-income populations.” 

They are now trying to target poor people.  In the study 67.2% of the 803 participants were black (I don’t know the percentage of other races, as I cannot access the full article).  83.4% completed the 24-month trial. 

Okay that’s interesting.

And the conclusion was:

CONCLUSIONS

A high-intensity, lifestyle-based treatment program for obesity delivered in an underserved primary care population resulted in clinically significant weight loss at 24 months.

Excuse me, but I call BULLSHIT on that conclusion.

After TWO YEARS of participating in whatever the fuck they put these folks through, the average weight loss was 4.51% . 

Now, do the math, if the person started out weighing 200 pounds, after TWO YEARS, they now would weigh 9.02 pounds less.  Not even 10 pounds lost. 

And here’s the rest of the bad news. 

After six months on this treatment, the average weight loss was at 6.86%.

That means, these people, on average, even though they were still participating in this treatment, were REGAINING THE little bit of WEIGHT they had lost. 

I’ve been following this on Show Me the Data, where better minds than mine are putting in their two-cents:

Deb Burgard points out:

Buried in the fine print: “… if patients in the intensive-lifestyle group who were missing data at follow up lost less weight than those who had their weights measured, this would provide an overestimation of treatment effects (p. 916). They also note that older patients in the study and in the LOOK AHEAD and DPP studies all were more likely to lose more weight and since this was also happening in control groups, “age-related weight loss in the overall cohort of patients (both groups) may explain why older patients lost more weight.

I love what dear Lily O’Hara said:

The title of this study should be changed from “Weight Loss in Underserved Patients – A Cluster-Randomized Trial” to “Medically Induced Weight Cycling in Systemically Underserved but Overly Weight Stigmatized People – A Cluster-F**ked Trial.”

So where do these ass hats get off calling this treatment effective in any way or that the weight loss is “significant”? 

And I’d love a breakdown of the cost per pound for the minimal weight loss that was achieved, because you know this kind of high-intensity, lifestyle-based program does not come cheap.

Oh, and let me share this piece of info – almost all of the people who authored this study get funding from – wait for it – NUTRISYSTEM!!!!!!!

OMG!!!!!!!!

Can I call BULLSHIT ANY LOUDER?