About one in four people who start a diet will be able to stick with it for a full year – and that's the key to losing weight, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Boston compared four weight-loss programs: the Atkins low-carbohydrate diet, the Ornish low-fat plan, the Weight Watchers calorie restriction plan and the Zone balanced macronutrient approach.

The study followed four groups of 40 overweight or obese participants who took two months of diet classes.

Dr. Michael Dansinger
Dr. Michael Dansinger

Willingness to stick to a diet and finding one participants enjoyed turned out to be more important than the diet itself, according to the researchers.

Study author Dr. Michael Dansinger found all four diets worked well for weight loss and reducing heart disease risk factors but only for the 25 per cent able to follow the plan closely for a year.

"You have to kiss a few frogs before you find your prince, before you find your long-term one," said Dansinger, who co-authored the study in the Jan. 5 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.




In a culture where high-calorie, fatty food is cheap, quick and convenient, it's difficult to stick with diets that tell us what to eat.

"If we choose an eating pattern that's consistent with what our usual preferred eating pattern is it might be easier to follow," said nutritionist Kim Raine of the Cente for Health Promotion Studies at the University of Alberta.

Once people find a diet they can live with, they should stick with it, the researchers say.

Esther Gryschuk of Edmonton lost 22 pounds on the Weight Watchers plan 17 years ago, and has kept it off. She eventually went to work for the company, and agrees perseverance is the key to weight-loss success.

"It isn't really about eliminating food groups, or about sticking to something really structured," said Gryschuk. "It's about learning healthy eating."

A related study published Monday in the Annals of Internal Medicine concluded no one knows which diets work best, although Weight Watchers at least has some scientific research backing it up.