Do Online Weight Loss Programs Work?

People used to believe that self help was something of a joke, that online weight loss couldn't possibly work, and that live diet meetings were the best approach to successful weight loss.

In fact modern research points to 2 very different reasons why it's time to drop the doubt. Firstly studies show very clearly that diet meetings don't work anyway, so measuring something against diet meetings is a waste of time! Even looking at the minority of people who stick to the diet and keep going to the meetings, less than 2% of them manage to keep the weight off for more than 12 months. For over 98%, the weight goes back on even faster than they lost it, plus extra, because the dieting has damaged their metabolic rate.

Secondly, studies also show very clearly that people DO get results from online help, and that those results are very similar to the effect of having your own personal therapist!

Of course people with serious issues like trauma or personality disorders will still require more intensive support, but for the overwhelming majority of people seeking help with weight loss, or smoking cessation, relationship problems, depression, anxiety, etc, online programs present the cheapest and best quality result that they can possibly get.

Remember for any support to be effective, it should foster self reliance, and although online programs take place in a cyber community, the person interacts as an individual and learns to be personally accountable.

In choosing a self-help program for weight loss, it's really important that you choose one that has been proven in clinical trials. New-age methods are not generally successful and can result in wasted time, money and effort, and can even do damage.

Just as new-age approaches are mostly ineffective, not every conventional treatment is worthwhile either. Talk therapy is all but useless in most cases, and the "gold standard" of therapy, cognitive behaviour therapy, has almost no scientific proof behind it. In fact some studies show it to be no better than placebo.

In choosing your online weight loss program it's worth noting that testimonials should never be regarded as evidence. For instance there are many testimonials regarding the use of hypnosis to quit smoking. But when you examine actual scientific trials, you see that less than 1% of people give up smoking by using hypnosis.

Why don't testimonials mean anything? Because for every testimonial praising the program, there are likely to be several hundred people who got zero result!

Because of the evidence, we strongly encourage you to investigate a self-help, online weight loss program, but similarly encourage you to do your research to make sure the method's proven, and that the support facilities are run by qualified professionals.

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