Diets just make you fatter

THE world's largest study of weight loss has shown diets do not work for the vast majority of slimmers and may even put lives at risk.
More than two-thirds pile the kilos straight back on, raising the danger of heart attack, stroke and diabetes.

Researchers warned the strain this repeated weight loss and gain places on the body meant most people would have been better off not dieting at all.

The findings, published in the American Psychologist journal, follow other research released in 2004 that showed 2.5 million Australians had tried or intended to try a low-carb diet.

Last night, the US scientists behind the latest research – the most thorough and comprehensive analysis of its kind – said dieting simply did not work.

The University of California researchers analysed the results of more than 30 studies involving thousands of slimmers.

Although the overview did not name specific weight loss plans, popular diets in recent years include the low carbohydrate, high protein Atkins diet and the GI diet, which is rich in slow-burning wholegrain carbohydrates.

Pooling the results of the various studies clearly showed that, while people do lose weight initially, most quickly put all the weight back on.

In fact, most people end up weighing more than they did to begin with.

Researcher Dr Traci Mann said: "You can initially lost 5 per cent to 10 per cent of your weight on any number of diets.

"But after this honeymoon period, the weight comes back. We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more."

Dr Mann's research showed that up to two-thirds of dieters put on all the weight they lost – and more – over a four to five-year period.

Half of those taking part in one study were more than 5kg heavier five years later, while dieters taking part in another study actually ended up heavier than other volunteers who hadn't tried to lose weight.

A four-year study into the health of 19,000 men revealed that most of those who put on weight had dieted in the years before the start of the study.

Bleak as these figures seem, the true picture could be even worse, as it is thought that most people lie about their weight and don't like to tell researchers that their weight has started to creep up again.

Weight loss expert Dr Samantha Thomas from Monash University in Melbourne said Australian research supported the US findings.

"We've also seen that dieting can be linked to a lot of poor mental health outcomes," she said.

"That just means that people take the weight off and feel really great about themselves and when they put the weight on again – which is kind of inevitable with yo-yo dieting – that people become depressed, have really low self esteem and feel even worse about themselves than when they went on the diet in the first place."

Dr Thomas said people who struggled with their weight often became discouraged when, after embarking on fad diets, they found the results were not long-term.

"The really awful thing about dieting is that it's become a cultural or fashionable thing and most people have spent lots of years and thousands of dollars on it, when there's no evidence to suggest that there's no long-term weight loss benefits," she said.

Rebecca McPhee from Nutrition Australia agreed: "Dieting works in the short-term but it just encourages unhealthy behaviours in the long-term because it puts the body under so much strain.

"Everyone is time poor and they want results quickly, so they diet and then regain the weight after going back to eating normally.

"If you look at The Biggest Loser, for example, the contestants lose too much weight, far too quickly, and they haven't developed the sort of skills to then go away and manage their diets."

source:www.news.com.au