Yeah, that's true, but if it was the case that long term weight loss is all but impossible, wouldn't we expect to see these individuals who kept their weight off for more than 1 year also regain the weight at the same rate over the long term? The database doesn't talk about kicking people out of their study if they regain their weight..

According to this article, the basis for the 5% statistic was pretty poorly formed to begin with, yet their findings have been repeated so much that it's become accepted fact https://archive.is/TyJTK#selection-359.205-367.4

Another reason I'm so skeptical about these stats are because generally, weight loss studies only follow people who are trying to lose quite big amounts of weight and don't study the (probably more common) instances of people losing a few kgs for aesthetic reasons, likely more successfully than those trying to address health issues via weight loss.

I guess my point wasn't so much that the IE argument is wrong, but that it relies on research that isn't at all settled in the literature, and perhaps as a community, we shouldn't be so black and white about saying weight loss is impossible, (which I often see here) when, from what I've read, we don't seem to know the first thing about the efficacy of typical diets

As I said before, I do think there is a lot of good to be gleaned from IE, but I'm skeptical about the logical foundations of using this approach for everyone. I'm also not sure if it's really true that being more mindful about what you eat can overcome the amount of money poured into manufacturing and advertising unhealthy food to the public - in that case, I definitely think some kind of government regulation needs to be advocated for.