Research indicates successful dieters may have rewired their brains to control their response to food.

At bottom, successful dieters must burn more calories than they consume.

Exercise Is Essential No more than a small percentage of successful dieters make it without exercise.

They are compiling detailed histories of successful long-term dieters - people who had maintained a weight loss of at least 30 pounds for at least one year.

The new research on successful dieters will disappoint those hoping for a magic-bullet solution; most had simply eaten less, and healthier, food, and exercised regularly.

Now that scientists are scrutinizing the problem of long-term results, diet companies are beefing up their efforts to help successful dieters maintain weight loss.

Whether it's Monday, Saturday, or a holiday, successful dieters follow a consistent pattern of eating from day to day.

It means showing people what the participants in his registry of successful dieters do.

Even those very-low-calorie liquid diet programs that require close medical supervision - the kind that Oprah Winfrey struggled through - have yet to figure out how to keep successful dieters at their goal weights indefinitely.

The Web site features a number of anecdotal reports from successful dieters.