The interesting thing they don't say is that the combination of low-cal eating and the admonition to never go off the diet means eating low cal forever.... and your BMR is likely to keep dropping as you do so, and eventually you'll have to drop the calories further (or exercise more) to maintain your loss. There may be no end to this cycle for at least some (most?) dieters, and either you'd have to eat 500 calories a day eventually or accept a re-gain. This adaptive process is why by year seven, almost no one keeps the weight off. (The stats are something like 99.75% regain by then)

According to Forsburg in Adiposity 101, the National Weight Control Registry shows that those who are still keeping it off eat very little:



Thanks for the post, Angela!