New Everyday Health Survey Reveals We Know How to Lose Weight — but Not How to Maintain It

Recently, Everyday Health conducted a survey of more than 3,000 American adults, revealing what worked and what didn’t for those who had tried to lose weight.

Survey respondents also answered questions about their weight loss knowledge and the biggest obstacles standing in the way of their goals. 

All of the respondents had attempted to lose weight during the last six months. Among them, the survey found that:

• More than 60 percent said they knew how to lose weight.
• Those who successfully lost weight in the past six months went into their journey with a higher level of knowledge about how to lose weight than those who did not lose weight in that time frame.
• Those who lost weight were likely to have tried traditional strategies like exercise and counting calories.
• Nearly 3 in 4 respondents who successfully lost weight highlighted the use of a weight loss app as one of the most effective tactics.
• Less than half of the respondents said they’d been able to stay committed to one set of weight loss tactics — whether they were traditional ones (such as calorie counting and physical activity) or more advanced strategies (such as tracking macronutrients and following a designated eating style).

The survey also found that motivation and mindset make a significant impact when it comes to weight loss and weight maintenance.

RELATED: Everyday Health’s Survey and Special Report: Weight Loss Reframed

For example, more than half (51 percent) of respondents said they struggled to maintain their motivation, and 1 in 5 said they felt too stressed to focus on weight loss. Meanwhile, 3 out of 4 respondents said their weight affects how they feel about themselves, and more than half felt guilt or shame associated with eating.

Finally, half of respondents said they “sometimes” or “often” experience weight fluctuations, while only about 1 in 4 never experienced weight swings. This suggests that even when they were able to lose weight, many had problems keeping that weight off.

What’s Needed? A Plan for Maintenance, Not Just Weight Loss 

A majority of the survey respondents said they knew how to lose weight. However, researchers have found that only about 20 percent of people who are overweight are successful in long-term weight loss.

When it comes to both losing weight and maintaining that weight loss, “the key is sustainability,” says Sean Hashmi, MD, a lifestyle and obesity medicine specialist at Kaiser Permanente and a member of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. He says that successful weight loss and weight maintenance are “about building a healthier relationship with food and your body for the long term.”

Here, he and other experts highlight three essential elements to building and sustaining that kind of healthy relationship: the right tools, the right habits, and the right mindset.

1. Use Tools for Greater Awareness

In the Everyday Health survey, two of the biggest differences between those who lost weight and those who didn’t were that those who lost weight were more likely to keep track of their calories and use a weight loss app.

Dr. Hashmi says the Lose It! app is the kind of tool that can support both of these effective weight loss tactics. “Tracking makes the results of your weight loss efforts visible,” he says.

For example, an app may reveal how your daily caloric intake has gradually reduced over several weeks, or how your weight has fallen slowly but steadily over a period of months. “It’s easy to get discouraged when you can’t see the change, but tracking allows you to see incremental progress,” he adds. 

He says that the Lose It! app not only allows you to track your calories and progress, but also helps you build better habits.

“Too often, motivation to change gets us started, but we fall into our old patterns,” says Hashmi. He also notes that tracking “creates a mindfulness component” in our everyday decisions and a greater sense of accountability. Because mindfulness is largely about being conscious and attentive to one’s actions — including around food — it’s harder to unconsciously engage in unhelpful habits once the app shows you the connection between your choices and your results.

Lose It! users agree. “A key piece has just been an overall sense of awareness … not just of what I’m eating, but also when I’m eating and why I’m eating,” says Danielle Willis, who has lost 30 pounds with Lose It!

2. Build Sustainable Habits

Sticking with the theme of habits, Lose It! users say that adopting sustainable behaviors is essential to both weight loss and weight maintenance.

“I approached my weight loss as a lifestyle change — one that I could maintain once I reached my goal weight,” says Willis, who has maintained her 30-pound weight loss for six months. 

At first, she focused on adapting her diet and exercise habits in ways that would lead to a calorie deficit. She ate out less often, set daily targets that supported weight loss, and increased her exercise routine. When she reached her target weight, she found that adopting her habits to support weight maintenance was as simple as adjusting her daily caloric intake. “Once I reached my maintenance weight, I did the same things, but I just added more calories,” she says. 

This is exactly the approach that people who want to lose and maintain weight should adopt from the start. “The current best practices for sustainable weight loss are all about having that ‘maintenance mindset’ the whole time,” says Sarah Molhan, principal product manager for Lose It!

“Weight loss is about adding small habits to your lifestyle that encourage you to be in a calorie deficit,” Molhan adds. “Sustainable maintenance is about continuing most of those habits, but just no longer eating in a calorie deficit.”

Experts agree. “Having a plan for weight loss maintenance is so important that I discourage engaging in weight loss at all until a maintenance plan is first identified,” says Thomas Rutledge, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Diego, and a staff psychologist at the VA San Diego Healthcare System.

The Lose It! app is designed to help people build sustainable habits around tracking their calories, recording their weight, discovering which types of food are most beneficial to their nutrition goals, and exercising in ways that reinforce weight loss and weight maintenance. 

Additionally, the app is offering a new course — Change Your Thinking, Change Your Weight — that supports both healthy weight loss and weight maintenance. The course explains how these two goals are closely intertwined.

“If someone follows the Lose It! philosophy to lose the weight, they’ll already have the perfect plan for weight maintenance,” Molhan adds.

3. Establish a ‘Winning’ Mindset

“A bad weight loss mindset is like trying to sail a ship without pulling up the anchor,” Dr. Rutledge says. “Even the best formula for healthy weight loss is usually doomed to failure with a mindset centered on qualities such as needing instant results, making false comparisons between weight and self-worth, [and] perfectionism.”

Notably, the Everyday Health survey found that many people who are attempting to lose weight may sabotage their mindset in some of the ways Rutledge mentioned. For example, 75 percent of respondents said their weight affects how they feel about themselves. 

Molhan adds that many people also approach weight loss with a mindset of “massive restriction.” This could mean cutting out entire food groups or macronutrient groups, or severely limiting one’s daily caloric intake. While this can lead to quick results — at least in the short term — it’s rarely sustainable, and so it often ends in weight regain. Researchers have found that, among people who lose weight, half will regain it within two years.

Yet, an unhelpful mindset can shift once a person commits to making a change. 

“Our Change Your Thinking, Change Your Weight course gives people the mindset tools to undo all the broken and unhelpful thinking that, for many people, years of restrictive dieting has introduced,” Molhan says.

Willis also says the key to her weight loss was a “lifestyle change,” and credits Lose It! and its resources for supporting that. Her story serves as encouragement for others starting the journey.

“Don't play the weight loss game until you have a winning strategy,” says Rutledge.

Everyday Health’s Weight Loss Reframed Survey queried 3,144 Americans nationwide, ages 18 and older, who tried losing weight in the past six months. The study was fielded between July 10 and August 18, 2023, across demographic groups, genders, and health conditions. Survey recruitment took place via an online portal, in-app, and email. The margin of error for the sample size of 3,144 is +/-1.7 percent at a 95 percent confidence level.

 

Editorial Sources and Fact-Checking

• Varkevisser RDM, van Stralen MM, Kroeze W, et al. Determinants of Weight Loss Maintenance: A Systematic Review. Obesity Reviews. February 2019.
• Hall KD and Kahan S. Maintenance of Lost Weight and Long-Term Management of Obesity. Medical Clinics of North America. January 2018.