If you want to learn how to keep the weight off once you’ve lost it, you could do a lot worse than to look at the participants in the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR). The NWCR surveys and tracks people who have lost large amounts of weight—and have succeeded in keeping it off for long periods of time. Registry members have lost an average of 66 lbs and have kept it off for an average of 5.5 years. Those are just averages, though. There’s a great deal of diversity among the members of the Registry. The amount of weight lost ranges from 30 to 300 lbs. Some participants have lost weight rapidly, while others have lost it very slowly—over as many as 14 years. And the amount of time they’ve kept the weight off ranges from 1 to 66 years!