David Baxter PhD
Late Founder
No Winner in Major Diet Study
by Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times Well Blog
February 25, 2009
For people who are trying to lose weight, it doesn?t matter if you are counting carbs, protein or fat. All that matters is that you?re counting something.
That?s the finding of the largest-ever controlled study of weight loss methods, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. More than 800 overweight adults in Boston and Baton Rouge, La., were assigned to one of four diets that reduced calories through different combinations of fat, carbohydrates and protein. Each plan cut about 750 calories from a participant?s normal diet, but no one ate less than 1,200 calories a day.
While the diets weren?t named, the eating plans were all loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins, which stresses low carbohydrates, Dean Ornish, which is low-fat, or the Mediterranean diet, with less animal protein. All participants also received group or individual counseling.
After two years, every diet group had lost ? and regained ? about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned. Participants lost an average of 13 pounds at six months and had maintained about 9 pounds of weight loss and a 2-inch drop in waist size after two years. While the average weight loss was modest, about 15 percent of dieters lost more than 10 percent of their weight by the end of the study. Still, after about a year, many returned to at least some of their usual eating habits.
The lesson, say researchers, is that people lose weight if they lower calories, but it doesn?t matter how.
?It really does cut through the hype,?? said Dr. Frank M. Sacks, the study?s lead author and professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. ?It gives people lots of flexibility to pick a diet that they can stick with.?
Dr. Sacks said the researchers avoided associating any of the diets with well-known commercial eating plans to reduce bias. While attendance at counseling sessions was linked with better weight loss, that wasn?t true for every dieter. In some groups people lost large amounts of weight even though they attended only a few counseling sessions. The real question for researchers, Dr. Sacks said, is what are the biological, psychological or social factors that influence whether a person can stick to any diet?
?The effect of any particular diet group is minuscule, but the effect of individual behavior is humongous,?? Dr. Sacks said. ?We had some people losing 50 pounds, and some people gaining 5 pounds. That?s what we don?t have a clue about. I think in the future, researchers should focus less on the actual diet but on finding what is really the biggest governor of success in these individuals.??
by Tara Parker-Pope, New York Times Well Blog
February 25, 2009
For people who are trying to lose weight, it doesn?t matter if you are counting carbs, protein or fat. All that matters is that you?re counting something.
That?s the finding of the largest-ever controlled study of weight loss methods, published today in The New England Journal of Medicine. More than 800 overweight adults in Boston and Baton Rouge, La., were assigned to one of four diets that reduced calories through different combinations of fat, carbohydrates and protein. Each plan cut about 750 calories from a participant?s normal diet, but no one ate less than 1,200 calories a day.
While the diets weren?t named, the eating plans were all loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins, which stresses low carbohydrates, Dean Ornish, which is low-fat, or the Mediterranean diet, with less animal protein. All participants also received group or individual counseling.
After two years, every diet group had lost ? and regained ? about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned. Participants lost an average of 13 pounds at six months and had maintained about 9 pounds of weight loss and a 2-inch drop in waist size after two years. While the average weight loss was modest, about 15 percent of dieters lost more than 10 percent of their weight by the end of the study. Still, after about a year, many returned to at least some of their usual eating habits.
The lesson, say researchers, is that people lose weight if they lower calories, but it doesn?t matter how.
?It really does cut through the hype,?? said Dr. Frank M. Sacks, the study?s lead author and professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. ?It gives people lots of flexibility to pick a diet that they can stick with.?
Dr. Sacks said the researchers avoided associating any of the diets with well-known commercial eating plans to reduce bias. While attendance at counseling sessions was linked with better weight loss, that wasn?t true for every dieter. In some groups people lost large amounts of weight even though they attended only a few counseling sessions. The real question for researchers, Dr. Sacks said, is what are the biological, psychological or social factors that influence whether a person can stick to any diet?
?The effect of any particular diet group is minuscule, but the effect of individual behavior is humongous,?? Dr. Sacks said. ?We had some people losing 50 pounds, and some people gaining 5 pounds. That?s what we don?t have a clue about. I think in the future, researchers should focus less on the actual diet but on finding what is really the biggest governor of success in these individuals.??
