New research published this week suggested that overweight kids who ended up losing weight did in fact keep much of that lost weight off using weight maintenance methods and follow-up.

But, that success was dampened in the long term, as even weight maintenance techniques were found to only be partially successful after two years. Is this a sign? Yes -- that the only results which are meaningful need to be looked at in long-term fashion.

Weight loss maintenance is a verbal misnomer in many cases. A complete lifestyle change and overhaul (permanently) would be a more correct method description. Keeping lost weight over the long term is the goal, but those entrenched habits are incredibly hard to break, even for kids (let alone adults with decades of food memories).