Don’t Cut Fat If You Want to Lose Weight

And while the school of thought in years gone by has been that low fat is the best way to go – a range of high fat, low carbohydrate diets have taken over in popularity recently.

He stressed that most diet studies failed to deliver meaningful results because participants are so bad at following dietary instructions.

Analysis of the outcomes for nearly 70,000 adults showed no difference in the average weight loss between reduced-fat diets and higher-fat diets.

“There is no good evidence for recommending low-fat diets”, said Deirdre Tobias, a doctor from Harvard Medical School and lead author of the study.

“In fact, in the setting of weight loss trials, higher-fat, low-carbohydrate dietary interventions led to a slight but significant, greater long-term weight loss than did low-fat interventions”, they wrote in a paper published on Thursday in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

A quick glance at the health section of any bookstore will reveal a bewildering array of different approaches to weight loss, but it looks like one of the most popular options for dieters isn’t all that effective in the long run if you want to shed a few excess baggage. “Therefore, weight loss diets should be tailored to cultural and food preferences and health conditions of the individual and should also consider long-term health consequences of the diets”. Scientists have debated the optimal proportions of fat, protein and carbohydrates, arguing over the merits of various approaches – from the Mediterranean diet, which focuses on plant-based foods and healthy fats including olive oil, to low-carbohydrate diets, which emphasize proteins and healthy fats and limit starchy grains and sugar.

Twenty of the trials included specifically enrolled patients with chronic diseases and 35 were designed specifically to compare weight loss interventions; 13 of the trials had no intended intervention for weight loss, and five were created to maintain a certain body weight.

“Energy balance calculations suggest that at the point of maximum weight loss, diet adherence has already substantially waned”, he wrote.

For successful weight loss, Diekman advises talking with a registered dietitian “who can design an eating plan for weight loss that meets your lifestyle”.

Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra said: “This analysis confirms that dietary advice to reduce the intake of fat and increase the consumption of starchy carbohydrates has been a complete and utter failure for tackling obesity”.

It follows previous research which has found a low fat diet is less effective for weight loss. Hall pointed out that there’s little high-quality evidence that “whole food diets” work for weight loss, and, more important, people have a lot of difficulty sticking to new eating patterns of any kind over the longer term.

“Low-fat is not healthy and this study shows it offers absolutely no help in losing weight”. “Low-carb wins out over a low-fat diet”, said Messer.