The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University / The Miriam Hospital, R.I.

— -- Individuals who have type 2 diabetes and are overweight are often encouraged to lose weight. But many think they could never succeed at this and if they did lose weight, they wouldn't be able to keep it off.

I'm a faculty member at The Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and The Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island. And one of the studies that I have been doing is to develop a National Weight Control Registry of individuals who have been successful at long-term weight control. Many of these individuals are individuals with diabetes. These individuals have lost over 70 pounds and kept it off about six years. So we asked them, "What did it take to become a successful weight loser?" Their answers include the following: they eat a low-calorie, low-fat diet; they eat breakfast regularly; they do a lot of physical activity, typically about an hour a day; they find time for that by watching very little amounts of TV each day. And one of the interesting things is that they weigh themselves regularly and use that information from the scale to know when to adjust their eating and exercise behaviors.

So hopefully with those strategies in mind, you too might become a successful weight loser. If you already have, and have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off at least one year, we'd love you too to join the National Weight Control Registry.