Programmes to help people lose weight through changes to their diet, exercise or both, are mainstays of weight management. Despite their widespread use, many people worry that after the programmes end they will regain the weight they lost – or more - removing the health benefits.
To understand the effects of this, we brought together 249 studies including 60,000 adults who were overweight or living with obesity. We compared the half who joined programmes to lose weight through diet or exercise, or both, with the half who had no support (or less support than offered on these programmes). We assessed what happened to people’s weight after the programmes ended, and what this meant for their physical and mental health.
