By Lee Bowman
Scripps Howard News Service

The secret weapon against yo-yo dieting may be to keep the string short, a new study suggests. Most successful dieters regain much of the weight they lose. But researchers in Providence, R.I., found that dieters can maintain weight loss by simply stepping on the scale every day and reacting quickly to cut back calories and boost exercise.

Led by Rena Wing, director of the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at The Miriam Hospital and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School, the researchers taught a group of already successful dieters a technique called "self-regulation" and then followed them for the next 18 months to see how they did.

Compared to a control group that received quarterly newsletters about eating and exercise in the mail during the course of the study period, those who got the training — either in person or over the Internet — were significantly more successful at not regaining five or more pounds during the intervention period, according to findings reported Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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