According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 36 percent of adult Americans attempt to lose weight, and 56 percent attempt to maintain their current weight or keep from gaining weight.

• Check out the CDC's Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System for more data on:
  • The number of U.S. adults trying to lose weight .
  • The number of U.S. adults trying to maintain current weight or keep from gaining weight.

How do people successfully lose weight and keep it off?
Healthy low-calorie and low-fat diets as well as high levels of physical activity are the foundation for success, according to the researchers who maintain the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR), a database of people who have self-reported successful weight loss and maintenance of weight loss.

Although the criteria for entry into the NWCR is the achievement and maintenance of weight loss of 30 pounds or more for at least one year, the average NWCR participant has lost about 60 pounds and kept it off for about five years.

When participants were asked questions about how they maintained their weight loss, the NWCR researchers found that:

• 92 percent limited their intake of certain foods (one example: eating at fast food restaurants less than once a week).
• They consumed an average of 1400 calories per day, of which 24 percent of calories was from fat, 19 percent protein, and 56 percent carbohydrates.
• They ate five times a day, on average.
• They burned an average of 2,800 calories a week through exercise (an equivalent of about 400 calories day).
• 75 percent weighed themselves regularly - at least once a week.
• About one-third described weight maintenance as hard, one-third as moderately easy, and one-third as easy.
• 42 percent reported that maintaining their weight loss was less difficult than initially losing the weight.

Approximately 80 percent of NWCR respondents are women, 97 percent are white, and 54 percent have an undergraduate or graduate degree.