Best Diet & Weight Loss Program Revealed; Weight Watchers & Jenny Craig are 2 Most Effective Say Researchers

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A study conducted by researchers at John Hopkins University revealed the two best weight-loss programs. Researchers at the university stated that over $2.5 billion a year is spent on weight loss programs but only very few are proven effective, reports the Hub.

The study was published in an issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine on April 6, 2015. It discovered that Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are the best options if one is considering to follow a diet and weight loss program.  

According to News Tonight, the Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig had sufficient evidence and data which prove that their weight-loss programs are effective and have long-term effects.  

Kimberly Gudzune is an assistant professor of medicine and a weight-loss specialist at the School of Medicine in John Hopkins. According to Vox, she co-authored the publication and said, "Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig are the two programs that have the evidence to support that they help people lose weight and keep it off."  

She also says, "For the other diet programs [there's an] absence of evidence. We don't know whether they help people to lose weight and keep it off." 

The study focuses on 32 major commercial diet programs in the United States. JH University researchers viewed 4,200 studies out of the 32 programs and found that only "11 of the programs met the scientific golden standard for reliability in the studies - using randomized clinical trials," states the Hub.  

Vox states that the researchers found that people who applied for the Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers programs lost an average of about three to five percent of their body weight. The report adds that people who joined Weight Watchers lost around eight pounds in 12 months, while Jenny Craig participants lost an average of 15 pounds per year.  

The Hub reports that when compared to other weight loss programs, Weight Watchers averaged 2.6 percent more weight loss, while there was an average of 4.9 percent weight loss for those who applied for Jenny Craig. 

According to the publication, researchers wrote, "Other popular programs, such as Nutrisystem, show promising weight-loss results; however, additional studies evaluating long-term outcomes are needed." 

For instance, the Atkins diet has "promising results from six months to a year," states the Hub. Yahoo adds that the Atkins diet, "showed greater short-term weight loss."  

Meanwhile, SlimFast received mixed results. Whereas programs with very-low-calorie meal replacements, like Medifast, did show weight-loss results for up to six months but there was no proof of sustained weight-loss.