I quite answering the annual survey because the food choices were not geared or appropriate for someone eating a low carb diet plus the results always reflected the prevalence in the subject pool of those following the eat less move more kind of advice, in other words the status quo. I know that Janet on this forum has repeatedly informed them of how low carb diets are not represented by either their study design and consequently their results but nothing ever changes. For me it was too tedious and irrelevant to things I was interested in to continue participation. Furthermore the results they were getting because of their poor design were nothing I wanted to contribute to.

DaisyDawn, I joined in about 2001. I received perhaps two follow-up surveys. The choices provided on these surveys did not allow me to accurately describe a low-carb diet which was DIFFERENT from the original diet I submitted.

In other words, I lost 50lbs on low-fat/low-cal/massive exercise and maintained for five years before switching to Atkins. Via the NWCR follow-up survey, I couldn't "rescind" my original success, which stopped succeeding. So I strongly question their conclusions about what leads to successful maintenance.

Besides, their idea of maintenance is 3-5 years for the survey. As everyone knows, maintenance is lifelong. It requires determined lifestyle change and constant vigilance. Many of us have experienced the Weight Creep at regular intervals over decades, not years. The statistics on maintenance are not encouraging, no matter what the survey.

I think her posts are pretty positively oriented.

Part of her point is that no one is attacking the behavior itself (thin people eat doughnuts, too!), they are just attacking people for how they look.

It lacks common sense and contravenes reality. People develop high blood pressure and joint pain because they are not healthy - that can be fat or thin. It is just not part of our mental makeup to see fat in a way that is neutral. Athletes often get this much more readily because they *have* to. I work and socialize with a lot of competitive athletes (I teach a sport) and they never give me a side eye about my body. They never question my goal to do a headstand or run a half marathon or whatever. Because they know thinness doesn't mean anything. 99% of people, no matter their seize, don't take care of their bodies. I would love to have people more involved in sports because it's the great equalizer. You cannot pretend you are healthy in sports just because you are 5'8 and 125 pounds. Movement will kick your butt if you are sedentary and eat like crap just as it will kick the butt of a person twice that weight. In the end, the doughnut will kick your butt no matter who you are.

I wonder if they've recently changed the format of the surveys, the last one I did was pages of check mark boxes that gave a lot of dietary options, that you answered based on your last year of maintenance, and also focused a lot on non-food habits and then mental health questions. It also had sections where I could free type my maintenance experience for the past year. I should get my annual one next month sometime, when it comes I'll try and copy/paste it here