This is not one of the diets on the quiz.
I see this stat everywhere, and it never ceases to frustrate me: According to a recent UCLA study, most people who lose weight on a diet or eating plan tend to gain it back. It just feels so wrong! There’s a reason, of course. Historically, a lot of the diets out there have been big departures from how we normally eat. They work as long as we follow them, we just don’t follow them very long (or we’d go crazy).
For this month’s Oprah magazine, I got to live out my 12 year-old Seventeen-reading self’s fantasy and write a quiz. Specifically, one that’s designed to tease out a person’s real priorities and ways of approaching things (do you eat with friends a lot? Do you need change to happen fast or slow?), and use those to identify diets and eating plans that actually make sense for the long haul.
What makes something like this work especially well, I think, is the fact that right now—and finally—there are newer options out there that take psychology into consideration, using how you live your life to help you think about ways to addess these issues. Strategies that make you the one running the show, not the other way around.
You can click through to the quiz here. I’d love to hear your thoughts—would you try approaches like these?
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Camille
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
So, I tried your quiz. The one diet that has worked for me, Weight Watchers (lost 50 pounds at the peak, now holding at about 44 pounds down after 5 years), is only in one of your groups of eating approaches, and it’s a lower-scoring one for me–WW is classed as “best” only for those who like Support Groups. For my single personal data point, that’s a really limited view of WW….and that makes me doubt the analysis for the other diets.
One other bit of feedback: I see a lot of overlap in the characteristics that put someone in the “Restrictive” and “Program based” approaches–this might just be a problem with how they are described, as I do see that the 2 groups of diets are distinct (having tried 3 or 4 of ‘em…).
I read and took the quiz from the O magazine. It was right on the money. I’ve lost 38 pounds (so far) on Weight Watchers over the past 6 months; your quiz nailed the two things that seem to be making a difference for me: I thrive on structure and the emotional support of a group. I just e-mailed the quiz to two friends from Oprah’s website. Thanks so much for this very useful information.