Your Checkup: Health Conversations for Motivated Patients
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From understanding diabetes and depression to navigating obesity, high blood pressure, and everyday wellness—we make complex health topics simple, human, and actually useful. Whether you’re managing a condition, supporting a loved one, or just curious about your body, this podcast helps you get smart about your health without needing a medical degree.
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Your Checkup: Health Conversations for Motivated Patients
76: Four Habits of People Who Maintain Weight Loss
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We explore the four key habits of people who have successfully maintained significant weight loss, based on findings from the National Weight Control Registry's long-term observational study.
• 62% of successful weight maintainers watch less than 10 hours of TV weekly (under 90 minutes daily)
• 75% weigh themselves at least once weekly as a data point, not as a measure of self-worth
• 78% eat breakfast every day, potentially helping regulate hunger cues throughout the day
• 90% maintain high levels of physical activity, averaging over an hour daily (420 minutes weekly)
• The study shows no increased psychological symptoms like depression or disordered eating in people who weigh themselves regularly
• Reducing TV time may create more opportunities for physical activity and NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis)
• Weight maintenance strategies focus on consistency rather than perfection
Check us out on threads and our website, or email us at yourcheckuppod@gmail.com. Next week, expect an episode about the flu vaccine as we head into the season.
Production and Content: Edward Delesky, MD & Nicole Aruffo, RN
Artwork: Olivia Pawlowski
Hi, welcome to your Checkup. We are the patient education podcast, where we bring conversations from the doctor's office to your ears. On this podcast, we try to bring medicine closer to its patients. I'm Ed Dolesky, a family medicine doctor in the Philadelphia area, and I'm Nicola Ruffo.
Speaker 1:I'm a nurse and we are so excited you were able to join us here again today. We recently like we record every week, but for some reason it feels like this week had so much like extra banter to talk about. We won't make the whole episode this you know have a tendency to do that but there are a few key things that I want to say on what might be a shorter episode. We wanted to give you something because we never want to leave you without our voices on a Monday morning.
Speaker 2:A little ditty for the holiday weekend, but it is a holiday and we'll have.
Speaker 1:We have great ideas coming up for you for the first quarter, well, the next quarter of the year, guess, starting in september. But we're gonna start off with a little, a little ditty here. So, oh well, let's see where should I go. Well, a personal experience I had is I went fishing on a party boat with my dad and there it was great. You know we try to go every year and we went for bluefish during the day we had been on this boat before. These guys had great. Ollie just finished his dinner. He's rolling around. It's terrific, this guy loves dinner.
Speaker 2:He's so cute, he's so cute.
Speaker 1:He does it when he's so happy, and then he's just getting the food all around in his belly, just making sure that it gets everywhere it needs to.
Speaker 2:I don't have ADHDhd diagnosed, but you know this was emblematic of. Was your dinner good, do you like it? I made it just for you.
Speaker 1:Such a good boy so early day on the boat 7 30. The boat's already out, so we're on there. We're towards the back, on the side of the boat and we're not chumps when it comes to fishing, but for some reason we get there. The guy to the right immediately catches the pool fish and continues to catch fish all day long. The guy to the left catches fish all day long. We don't have as much luck. We get a couple. Now it was great to just be out there on the water, but we looked at everything, we looked at the color, we looked at I mean, there wasn't bait, it was jig fishing, I don't know. We did catch two, though, and it was a great experience, but I was able to take that and bring it home and cook it for you.
Speaker 2:It was good.
Speaker 1:It was bluefish, and what did you think of it?
Speaker 2:I thought it was delicious and I was kind of skeptical at first when you said you were going fishing for bluefish, because I've heard that bluefish doesn't taste very good. But I guess that's because you took the whatever that schmutz was.
Speaker 1:I don't know what to call it, but it was advice from my dad and he's like make sure you take off that extra like deep red blue stuff.
Speaker 2:Take the stoma off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that is so no shade to anyone with a stoma, but that.
Speaker 2:Oh, a beefy red stoma is a good thing.
Speaker 1:I know, but I'm talking about fish culinary wonders. So that was great and I was so excited about that. It was so cool to like get something, get it and then bring it home and cook it right there, and I never understood it and gather, hunting and gathering.
Speaker 1:You're a real man I was and I never understood it growing up, because he would always like he would go fishing, he would get the trout, he would bread the trout, he'd be like we got to eat this tonight and I'm like why? He probably never realized that until now, if he's listening. But now I get it. There's such pride. I was like, wow, I went out there and I got this and brought it home. So that was that. I was really happy. I had a great time with him. Love, making those memories All right Enough. Sappiness, that was the fishing experience. We got a new sandwich.
Speaker 2:We got a new sandwich.
Speaker 1:We've talked about the Herschel's pastrami sandwich. When I think of a sandwich, that's the sandwich I think of. I'm like, wow, that is like the best sandwich I can have. I just had one this last weekend that goes right up there on that list.
Speaker 2:Do you want to tell us what it was?
Speaker 1:I do. It was a pastrami sandwich. It wasn't pastrami, oh God. Oh, I did it again.
Speaker 2:It was prosciutto salami. Oh God, oh, I did it again. It was prosciutto salami, sharp provolone and roasted red peppers this. But the key to a good sandwich is having really, really, really thinly sliced meat.
Speaker 1:Clearly.
Speaker 2:Because you know what I mean. If you get a sandwich and the meat is thick, get it out of here with the thick meat.
Speaker 1:It's the surface area thing? Yeah, it is, cause it's like a thinly sliced piece of cheese.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it tastes better when it's thin.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, my God, this sandwich. I look forward to getting sandwiches again from this place. It looks like they specialize in sandwiches and meats and I'm extremely excited about the future to come.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we got some recs from two guys online actually when we were checking out about different kinds, so we'll have to go back next time we go. This sandwich was so good, I got the same sandwich Two days in a row.
Speaker 1:Two days in a row. Yeah, it was amazing. And then one other thing before we let you guys go and we start talking about actual stuff, we were at the beach and I saw something I had never seen before in my life what?
Speaker 2:what are you about to say?
Speaker 1:I saw a man parasailing.
Speaker 2:oh, oh my gosh, this is crazy.
Speaker 1:On the land, but with what I would call a fan pushing him. And there he is sitting, parasailing, being propelled by this fan through the air.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was I'm just looking it up a fan powered paraglider, officially known as a powered paraglider or paramotor. Yeah, look that up, because that's what it was. That was crazy. And first, like when we first saw him, he was like really really low, like right just above, like probably touching the dunes on the beach, and Eddie was like is that a pirate? I thought he was flying into action. And then he kept going like all the way down the dunes but then kept getting higher and higher and we're like, okay, yeah, he's high, he's like above the houses, yeah. But then, oh my god, like a couple minutes later we look over and they're like really tall, um, like hotels a little farther down, and he was higher than them.
Speaker 2:Yep, in like now he was over the ocean. He wasn't really like on the beach anymore, he was over the ocean kind of where, I think, in like the airspace, where the planes go with like the banners. Yeah, we're like he's in like a flight path. What is he doing? Like he was. He was so far like to where we couldn't even see him. He was just a little speck in the sky yeah, I have so many questions and that seems so fun and like where did he?
Speaker 2:because he was really low when we first, so like he had to have taken off not far from us how do you get started with one of these things?
Speaker 1:do you just sit there and the fan propels you? Do you have to get a running start? How do you get a running start?
Speaker 2:yeah, I wonder if we didn't ask my brother if he saw him, because he was at, like the beach bar a little down from us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we could have. Maybe we should have been text. Maybe he'll answer us. I was astounded and then he just disappeared. I don't know where he went. Yeah, never seen anything like it. Uh-uh yeah, never seen anything like it. Uh-uh yeah. So look it up, if you catch that earlier, and let us know what you think, because that was crazy. I love that, but like it was just so random. You see stuff in the water all the time. People get jet skis, people are paragliding, doing the same thing, but attached to a boat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this was a new one.
Speaker 1:He was just traveling. He was a new one, he was just traveling.
Speaker 2:He was a wanderer Waving to everyone.
Speaker 1:An air pirate he was waving yeah, he was waving. He was very wholesome in that way.
Speaker 2:Well, the whole beach was like standing up and just watching him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everyone was looking at the dolphins, like half an hour earlier, and then turn around, stood up and looked at this guy. He got a lot of attention. That was crazy. Yeah, guy, he got a lot of attention. I, that was crazy. Yeah, I think that's what I got for today. I mean, a lot of other stuff happened, but why don't we dive in? What do you think? Sure, all right.
Speaker 2:So what are we going to talk about today, nick? So today we're talking about something that I think is really interesting. Um, we're back on our weight loss things, and this time we're talking about four habits of people that have maintained their weight loss and what they are, and it seems like they're pretty attainable for most people.
Speaker 1:I think so. So today's information is based off of the National Weight Control Registry and what this is? It's an ongoing. It is still going. It was put together in 1994 and is a long-term observational study of people who already achieved long-term success in weight loss maintenance. And what did that mean? They defined it as losing at least 30 pounds for at least a year, and it's been actively running. It's got several thousand people in it now. Most of them are women who are enrolled and of middle age, and they have identified a certain number of well, four. They have identified four habits of these people.
Speaker 1:So what they do in this study is they send these people, like year after year, a survey that they fill out, and it's a pretty easy way to keep track of people. And people send back the answers to the survey and they get answers about these people who are having success with weight maintenance. These people who are having success with weight maintenance. This is done out of Brown Medical School and the Miriam Hospital Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center. So I mean, why don't we just dive right in? We have a certain proportion of people. Why don't we start from the lowest percentage of people, do this to the highest, so that we can kind of lead into like what most people who have success do. All right, do you want to take the first one?
Speaker 1:sure, okay the first one is people who are watching less than 10 hours of tv per week of the people who kept the weight off, 62 of them did this we we watch a lot of TV.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we do. I don't Especially like if a new series comes out.
Speaker 1:Why are we like this? I don't know, but I never thought it would be detrimental and we like to keep ourselves healthy and fit to the best we can. But there is a good amount of time that we unapologetically fall in love with the corner of the couch, and not just one tv, but two.
Speaker 2:You have two tvs.
Speaker 1:This gives me a little pause to think about my choices been a little different on this summer, but not so much work, but I think with the light and the sunlight we've been taking walks we have been going on a lot of walks.
Speaker 2:Well, now that it's you know for a while there, like end of July into August, it's like so humid you can't even breathe.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The air is like thick, it's like walking outside into like a bucket of yogurt and you can't. We're not taking walks then, but now that it's nicer out, and you're healed from your toe. Oh my gosh, I know I'm healed from my toe. We can start watching less TV.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think the less TV feeds into what people really did, what the most people did, but we'll leave that a little bit for a spoiler. So we feel a little gluttonous when we watch so much tv. Less than 10 hours of tv weekly what does that work out to be per day? Because that's a tough one to kind of like less than two conceptualize if we divide that by seven. So just under an hour and a half of TV a day.
Speaker 2:Yikes.
Speaker 1:Yikes. Well, for what. You will take that information and do what you will with it. I will take the next one Coming in at people who have lost weight. 75% of them did this Weighing themselves at least once. Weekly Thoughts.
Speaker 2:I think that's an important one, because just to do a temp check, see where you are, especially if you've lost this weight or maybe you haven't lost weight but you're not really trying to gain or lose any weight just to kind of see where you are, because I think it's really easy to you know six months from now you get on the scale one day and you're 10, 15 pounds heavier than you were the last time, and then it's like, oh my god, what happened?
Speaker 2:right which it's harder to do. If you're doing that, you know, like I know, a lot of people will do it daily I feel like weekly is good. I mean your weight fluctuates like you weigh yourself daily and your weight fluctuates like so can fluctuate so much between one day to the next totally yeah, so that's a good one to keep in mind.
Speaker 1:Is that like don't go nuts if you're weighing yourself daily and like you're like two pounds up the next day, like that's fluid most likely, like that's maybe, like you haven't gone to the bathroom yet, like there's a lot of rational explanations, like give yourself some to use the very zeitgeisty word, grace. Give yourself some grace when it comes to that. When it comes to that, I personally think it's a good idea to have some data and acquire that information. I think a lot of people it can be a very emotional task to stand on the scale and I can appreciate that and look at a number, and I think both of us here look at the weight as a data point, but not someone's identity by any means and that there's like a whole lot of more information to be had to like talk about someone's health, but I think it's just like a useful piece of information that, should you choose to not ignore, it could be very useful to be mindful of.
Speaker 1:And it turns out of people who kept weight off for a year and lost more than 30 pounds 75% of them did this.
Speaker 2:That's a lot.
Speaker 1:That's a lot Of note. When they looked at the National Weight Control Registry, people coming into the survey did not show higher levels of psychological symptoms like depression, emotional eating, binge eating or self-induced vomiting than the observed population when they did these things. So that's also an important thing to think about. Perhaps we need a whole episode on like the science of weighing yourself and like proving that it's not detrimental to one's mental health in populations and that it could be something to consider. I know it's a very, very sensitive subject, but we're just telling you what we found, so what about the next one?
Speaker 2:All right. The next one um of people who have kept weight off for a year or more. 78% of those people were eating breakfast every day.
Speaker 1:Hot take. We're back in. The breakfast is the most important meal of the day realm, which was. I know it was from big cereal really trying to push their, their marketing. Yeah, it worked. But which was? I know it was from big cereal really trying to push their marketing if it worked.
Speaker 1:But since you read it, I'll give the thought I think I've seen. When I was looking over those lectures this is coming back to me now I was seeing a lot of like if you do eat earlier in the day, your hunger cues are less, so that you don't eat more later in the day and try to catch up for what you already had eaten because you were just like overshooting, because you were so hungry because you skipped breakfast. Obviously this is a little bit different for people who intermittent, fast and like, are on this like more controlled regimen of an eating plan, but this one was interesting to me. It's something to consider if you want to be consistent. You know we've been doing eggs in the morning for breakfast.
Speaker 1:I like a yogurt. I really do. The yogurt was kind of my lunch thing though, but I might've been under eating as well, so who knows. But that's that 78% of people do that. All right, and I will take the last one. This one comes in at a whopping 90%, otherwise stated for people who have kept more than 30 pounds off over the course of a year. When they wrote in, 90% of them did this. When they wrote in, 90% of them did this. They maintained higher levels of exercise by averaging over an hour daily.
Speaker 2:It's almost like we've talked about this before.
Speaker 1:I do. Someone would reasonably check out episode 10 if they were interested in this. One An hour daily. So I just did the math. An hour daily is 420 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise. So that's kind of above that like 150 to 300 that we've been talking about for the cardiovascular benefit and more recently I'm seeing that like for people in weight loss and weight maintenance. There's more recommendations while I'm studying for these boards 200 to 300 minutes, but an hour daily. 90% of people who kept the weight off after a year were exercising over an hour daily and I kind of wanted to tie this back to. They also watch less TV and they proposed in their study that people who watched less TV used that extra time to go move.
Speaker 2:That checks out.
Speaker 1:It checks out. So there is a little bit of a difference that one day we'll explain, maybe right now, between actual formal exercise, where you're increasing the heart rate, and NEAT. Neat stands for non-exercise activity thermogenesis. Basically, it's the energy expenditure from all the physical activities that are not considered formal exercise. So we're talking about, like, if you're fidgeting, doing household chores, playing with children, gardening, standing, walking, that's NEAT and this kind of gets at. A lot of people who have high amounts of neat in their day tend to keep the weight off. So yeah, in summary, from the top, from highest to lowest, the four things are maintaining high levels of physical activity over an hour a day, eating breakfast every day weighing themselves at least once weekly and watching less than 10 hours of TV a week.
Speaker 1:Thank you for coming back to another episode of your checkup. Hopefully you were able to learn something for yourself, a loved one or a neighbor. Check us out on threads. That's where we spend most of our time. You can find us on our website. You can also send us an email yourcheckuppod at gmailcom. I expect we will have an episode about the flu vaccine next week, since that season is coming on us to go get vaccinated. So come check us out, even if you aren't interested, just to listen to an extra perspective that maybe you hadn't heard before. But, most importantly, stay healthy, my friends, until next time. I'm at the Lesky, I'm Nicole.
Speaker 1:Thank you and goodbye.
Speaker 2:Bye next time. I'm Ed Dolesky. I'm Nicole Rufo. Thank you, and goodbye, bye.
Speaker 1:This information may provide a brief overview of diagnosis, treatment and medications. It's not exhaustive and is a tool to help you understand potential options about your health. It doesn't cover all details about conditions, treatments or medications for a specific person. This is not medical advice or an attempt to substitute medical advice. You should contact a healthcare provider for personalized guidance based on your unique circumstances. We explicitly disclaim any liability relating to the information given or its use. This content doesn't endorse any treatments or medications for a specific patient. Always talk to your healthcare provider for complete information tailored to you. In short, I'm not your doctor, I am not your nurse, and make sure you go get your own checkup with your own personal doctor.
