Funny--- I had always heard/read that it was 5% that managed to keep the weight off long term.
There are a lot more stats at the National Weight Control registry
http://www.nwcr.ws/
Anyways, don't let that stupid percentage intimidate you!! It almost makes one want to give up from the start because it illicits a defeatist attitude like "the odds are not in my favor so why try?" But the fact of the matter is that even if that 2-5% is a hard and fast number, that still means that
some people manage to do it and you can too!!! I am one example and there are many others on this site as well. It is possible. I am so so so happy I was blissfully unware of that statistic when I started or I might have just given up early on but instead I just stuck with what was working and before you know it (alright, well, 3 years later anyways) I was at my goal weight and have been maintaining for over a year. For me a big part of the weight loss was believing that it was possible--- that
I could do it, that my
body could do it. And so can most everybody else. It is possible.