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Saturday, December 3, 2011

Less Good News

The December 2011, Vol. 29, Number 10 of the Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter has a report on an apparently well designed and executed study comparing the results of Weight Watchers program and primary care by physicians as a control group.  The study started with 772 overweight women in the UK, Germany and Australia and they were randomly assigned to the test group and the control group.  The average BMI was 31.

After one year, the Weight Watcher women had lost 11.1 pounds compared with the control group's loss of 5.0 pounds.

That is a lot of effort for not much result.

But wait, it gets worse.  46% of the control group and 39% of the Weight Watchers group had dropped out of the program before the year was up.

You can get a complete report on the research at the Tufts Letter website for $1.95.  Search for "Weight Watchers Beats Conventional Healthcare for Weight Loss".

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