Then there is no point in taking the weight off, unless it is a life-and-death situation, such as dropping enough lard to be eligible for a vital surgical procedure, or getting in respectable shape for that 25th graduation reunion.
It would be useful to see a comparison of the long-term success rates of various diet regimens.
How about quality of life? Those extra 25-30-50 lbs or more creates havoc on knees, mobility, breathing etc. Those extra lbs might not kill you but can make life more less enjoyable.
People make a choice when they gain the weight back. They give up quality of life to eating their favorite foods in quantity.
The big problem that people run into is when they hit their target weight they “go back to normal” forgetting that “normal” is how they got fat in the first place. They see diets as temporary, it needs to be permanent. Part of my key to having kept weight off is approaching it like a religious conversion, there’s how I used to be and how I am now, I had to spawn a new “normal” that involved less eating and more exercise than the old “normal”.
Which regimen people use won’t really change the long term success since the problem is they tend to leave the regimen the moment they hit target.