Media headline: Diets don’t work!

Instead of reporting the latest diet craze, the latest news suggests that diets don’t work.

New research attests what years of failed dieting have told millions for ages: diets don’t work in the long term.

New research

According to new research conducted by the University of California, dieters can lose significant amounts of weight in the first few months, but most will return to their starting weight within five years.

Professor Traci Mann, a psychologist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) said: “Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."

Generally, the study found that dieters find that they lose five to 10 per cent of their weight, which ultimately comes back.

"We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority," Mann added.

After analysing 31 long term studies that trailed people on a range of diets for two to five years, the conclusion reached was that most people would have been better off not dieting at all.

"Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back," Mann wrote.

Published in the April issue of American Psychologist, the study also found that people who repeatedly lost and gained weight were linked to cardiovascular diseases, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function.

Typically, many dieters can lose up to 10 per cent of their starting weight in the first six months but put on more weight than they lost in four to five years.

In fact, 83 per cent of dieters in the study put more weight and half of dieters in one study weighed 11 pounds over their starting weight.

The doctor’s verdict

According to NetDoctor.co.uk, dieting is so popular that 70 per cent of the adult female population in developed countries and 30 per cent of males have been on one. Whatever the fad diet, the medical website says, whether it is the F-Plan, a liquid diet or the Pineapple diet, people will try almost anything in their insatiable quest to shed a few pounds.

The results are usually the same. Diets may produce results in the short term but few retain their weight loss, and may end up gaining more pounds as time went on.

Professor Traci Mann, a psychologist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) said: “Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."

NetDoctor says that because diets involve a change to a person’s normal eating patterns, old habits die hard and we resist changing our lifestyle to avoid stress – especially if it disagrees with habits in our social and familial world.

Also, willpower seems to have a time limit. It is strong at the beginning of a diet when desperation to lose weight is high, but willpower will recede along with the state of our health and pressures of day-to-day life.

Maintaining a situation with willpower is a hard at the best of times, especially when a new dietary regime is too strict. The desire to continue to diet will tail off when we think we have made progress. There is a difference, NetDoctor says, between willpower and a commitment to long-tern behaviour change.

Other reasons diets do not work, NetDoctor explains, are that set diets hardly ever address the emotional aspects of overeating. Emotional problems which result overeating, is a habit of those people turn to food for comfort. Dieting does not solve the problem of emotional overeating, and in fact, could make it worse, as deprivation of food might cause further depression.

Another reason cited by NetDoctor is that people usually fail to change their core habits. People who do lose weight and keep it off permanently are those who have made lifestyle changes in their eating and exercise habits and those of their families.

What is healthy eating?

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) provides practical advice on making safe and healthy food choices. According to the FSA, to have a healthy diet, people should be eating more fruit and veg; starchy foods such as wholegrain rice, bread, pasta and potatoes; eat less fat, salt and sugar; and, eat more protein-rich foods like meat, fish, eggs and pulses.

Keep the variety of these foods up too. To mix it up means to give your body the best prospect of nutrients these foods bring.

We should also be drinking approximately 1.2 litres (6 to 8 glasses) of fluid every day to stop us getting dehydrated for climates such as the UK. Starchy foods should make up a third of what we eat, and we should eat five portions of fruit and vegetables everyday, according to the FSA.

Britain’s primary authority on nutrition also recommends that we keep salt to a six gram maximum and we should eat much less saturated fat and choose unsaturated fats instead.

Click here to visit the FSA website and its tip for eating healthily.

Stay healthy and don’t diet

Obsessing over wanting to be thin in a world full of temptations is a recipe for disaster. As new evidence comes out suggesting that diets are proven not to work, and with new foods heralded as the next healthiest thing to eat every week,  the message is clear.

The most prevalent eating disorders in today’s society are obesity and anorexia/ bulimia. Many attitudes towards food are unhealthier than many of the treats we eat.

So to be healthy, dieting, as we know, is not the way to do it. For long term weight loss that also leads to a healthy mind, body and spirit, eating a variety of the right healthy food in line with nutritional advice is the only way to go.

 

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