The most well-published community-based lifestyle intervention in the medical literature is moreover one of the most effective.
CHIP, the Complete Health Improvement Program—now known as Pivio, may be “the most well-published community-based lifestyle interventions in the [medical] literature.” It is moreover one of the most effective, with clinical changes “approaching those outcomes achieved in [live-in] residential lifestyle programs.”
As I discuss in my video The Weight Loss Program That Got Largest with Time, CHIP encourages people to transition toward a increasingly whole food, plant-based diet, and the “average reductions in thoroughbred pressure were greater than those reported with the DASH [Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension] study and comparable with the results” of thoroughbred pressure-lowering drug trials. If we’re going to reverse the worldwide chronic disease epidemic, though, we’ve got to scale this up. To make CHIP increasingly wieldy to a wider audience, each of Hans Diehl’s live presentations was videotaped. Then, a “trained and certified” volunteer facilitator got people in a room to watch the videos and helped foster discussion. When it comes to safe, simple, side effect–free solutions, such as a healthier nutrition and lifestyle, you don’t need to wait for a doctor to show up and requite a lecture. Sounds great, but does it work?
Those individuals who were the worst of the worst and participated in the program, finishing all the videos, had a 20-point waif in thoroughbred pressure, a 40-point waif in bad LDL cholesterol, and increasingly than a 500-point waif in triglycerides, as you can see unelevated and at 1:08 in my video. Of those who came in with diabetic-level fasting thoroughbred sugars, well-nigh one in three left with nondiabetic-level fasting thoroughbred sugars. Remember, all of this was achieved simply by empowering people with knowledge. Just encouraging people “to move toward a whole-food, plant-based diet” led to these remarkable benefits.
What was the effectiveness of this volunteer-delivered lifestyle modification program on 5,000 participants? The same kind of significant reductions in weight, thoroughbred pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, and thoroughbred sugars were found. Most studies giving “dietary translating to free-living subjects can be expected to reduce thoroughbred total cholesterol by only 3-6%…[but a] sustained reduction in thoroughbred total cholesterol concentration of 1% is associated with a 2-3% reduction in the incidence of heart disease.” So, on a population scale, plane small differences matter. Put thousands of people through just one month of CHIP, however, and you get an 11 percent waif on stereotype and up to a nearly 20 percent waif among those who need it most, as you can see unelevated and at 2:12 in my video.
Do the participants maintain their healthy habits, though? Doctors can’t plane get most people to take a single pill once a day. How constructive can a volunteer-led video series be at getting people to maintain a transpiration of eating habits? Researchers looked at the CHIP data to find out. How were participants doing 18 months without completing the program? Most were worldly-wise to maintain their reductions of meat, dairy, and eggs, though some of the junk supplies had started to slip when in. Their fruit and veggie consumption dipped, though not when to baseline. Ready for the huge shocker? Plane though the participants had been told explicitly to eat as much as they wanted without any calorie- or carb-counting and without any portion control, just by stuff informed well-nigh the benefits of centering their diets increasingly on whole plant foods, by the end of the six-week program, they were eating, on average, well-nigh 339 fewer calories a day without plane trying. Instead of eating less food, they were just eating healthier food.
But that was right at the end of the six-week program when they were all jazzed up. Where were they 18 months later? Anyone familiar with weight-loss studies knows how it works: You can excite anyone in the short term to lose weight using practically any kind of diet, but then without six months or a year, they tend to proceeds it all back—or plane more. The CHIP participants were eating well-nigh 300 fewer calories a day during the program, but 18 months later, they were eating well-nigh 400 fewer calories. What kind of nutrition can work plane largest the longer you do it? A whole food, plant-based diet. “Many weight loss programs restrict energy [calorie] intake by limiting portion sizes, which often results in hunger and dissatisfaction with the eating regime, thus contributing to low compliance and weight regain,” but the satiety-promoting all-you-care-to-eat plant-based, whole-food dietary tideway may be the secret weapon of sustainable weight loss.
