If your morale hit the floor when you read the New York Times’ article about the massive Biggest Loser weight regain experienced by participants, you are not alone.

My phone has been ringing with some mighty disheartened folks, asking for my opinion.

First of all, the regain is real. I won’t tell you it’s not. Over the past 15 years, I’ve coached many clients who lost weight in an all-out, highly restrictive, biggest loser fashion – weight loss surgery, fad diets, fasting, liquid protein diets – and ALL of them regained ALL the weight.

I personally did this many times myself, before losing 92 lbs permanently. There is no shame in regaining weight. It’s what the body is programmed to do when assaulted. I mean that word “assaulted.”

The problem with highly restrictive diets is we must leave the body out of the weight loss effort, literally wreaking violence internally.

This wave of reaction I’m feeling about the Biggest Loser article reminds me of one of my most vivid memories, which occurred right before I decided to lose weight permanently.

I was in the medical school library, and I had just found several studies showing how weight is regained rapidly after highly restrictive diets. I admit to being just as stunned as many of you are right now. The numbers I found on the National Weight Control Registry (which follows real life losers) were:

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