Definitely. Obesity is a large scale problem and it requires a large scale solution. This is why epidemiological studies (which a lot of people often knock) are actually quite useful in this field, IMO.
You can’t say that something will work for 1 person from an epidemiological standpoint, but you can say that if you implement these changes in a large population, a significant portion of those people will lose weight/not gain weight. IMO we need to focus more on preventing obesity. Once you’re there it’s very hard to get rid of it, specially if it started in childhood and resulted in fat cell hyperplasia.
Which Is The Best Weight-Loss Diet?
August 09 2010
The best weight loss diet is still intensely debated and there has been very few well conducted studies which looked at this issue. Is a high protein diet better, or high carb or a high fat diet the best weight loss diet?
A recent study looked to find out which is the best weight loss diet and received a lot of good attention.
What were the strengths of the best weight loss diet study?
- Large number of participants: There were 811 participants from diverse backgrounds irrespective of age, income, geography and included a large percentage of men. Obviously the largest RCT related to determine the best weight loss diet.
- High rate of retention: The people who dropped out of the study were low which was a serious problem in other weight loss studies.
- Long Duration: The best weight loss diet study lasted for 2 years which is the longest trial for randomized weight loss trial.
- Compliance accessed: Compliance was assessed by objective markers .For example, urinary nitrogen excretion was used to asses adherence to the protein intake.
- Intense Treatment: Treatment included individual and group instructional sessions to promote adherence.
What was the design of the best weight loss diet study?
Eight hundred and eleven participants were randomly assigned to four different diets:
- 20% fat, 15% protein, and 65% carbs; Low-fat,average-protein
- 20% fat, 25% protein, and 55% carbs; Low-fat, high-protein
- 40% fat, 15% protein, and 45% carbs; High Fat, Average Protein
- 40% fat, 25% protein, and 35% carbs.High Fat High Protein
All of the diets had an average calorie deficit of 750 calories from the patients’ aggregate baseline caloric intake. Participants followed the diets for two years, during which time they were also expected to engage in 90 minutes of moderate exercise each week, keep a daily food diary, fill out a Web-based tool that monitored how closely their intake adhered to their assigned diet, and attend group and individual sessions to promote adherence
What were the results of the best weight loss diet study?
All the diets were equally successful in promoting moderate weight loss and maintaining this loss for over 2 years. Weight loss averaged 3-4 years after 2 years.
Practical Recommendations
- Any diet which emphasizes calorie restriction will work and the specific amount of protein, fat or carbs of the diet does not matter.
- Diets should be tailored to the person based on their individual and cultural preferences than based on nutritional recommendations for long term success.
- Behavioral strategies maybe more important in weight loss diets than their composition.
Related Articles
FullDeplex | Tue August 17, 2010
Telling people they are unhealthy because they are fat and then combat this by peer pressure or other forces of society always gives me a bit of the creeps. It is a slippery slope.
I don’t disagree the points made above. I too think preventing that people are able to eat al lot of crap will decrease wiht a community effort will be beneficial for everyone, because I find it will help decrease the amount of decease amongst the population significantly.
I do, however, find the focus on a link between obesity and sickness unjust. People get sick from crappy foods even when they are not fat. It’s easy to see fat people as unhealthy and “pick” on them, but a lot of research does not show such a high correlation between fatness and sickness (or even any at all) and correlation is not the same as causation. I also know some fat people that might be healthier than me, but this is not a sienctific argument so I will leave it at that.
In short: We might be doing the right things (community effort) for the wrong reasons.
And: In most cases conformity has much greater negative concequence than deviance.
For sure, you can do bad things to your health by eating a ‘toxic’ diet even while in neutral or negative energy balance (thus not getting fat).
But, there is no doubt that obesity creates morbidities and comorbidities. It’s not just epidemiological correlations that support this; it’s the directly observed biological phenomena that are associated with excessive adiposity (like increased inflammation, lipotoxicity, increased blood pressure, insulin resistance etc.).
The other thing to note is that numerous individuals that have lost weight enjoy improved health and improved health markers. While it ‘may’ occasionally occur that people enjoy better health after aquiring obesity than before, I think the reverse is patently more prevalent!
Cheers
Mav
Have they check body composition, or not?
Because weight loss not always fat loss.
Could be muscle mass loss
Yeah, you usually lose some muscle mass as well. I haven’t read the full study so I dunno about body comp.
Obesity is definitely a cause in many diseases. Long ago we thought adipose tissue was just a passive storage facility, boy were we wrong!
There is such a thing that has been dubbed “healthy obesity” or “insulin sensitive obesity”. Some obese people don’t develop insulin resistance. In comparing insulin sensitive with insulin resistant obesity, a very strong correlation has been found between macrophage infiltration into adipose tissue (typical sign of low grade inflammation, circulating adiponectin levels and insulin resistance(I think the r was about 0.98.. I can check it if you want).
But some people don’t seem to get insulin resistance, and insulin sensitive obesity was in one study (same as the one above) actually associated with a higher amount of fat cells. Which is weird as this has been thought of as a bad thing. However, one theory says that low grade inflammation is cause by fat cells becomming so large that the distances oxygen has to diffuse are too big. So if you have more fat cells you can have the same level of fatness with smaller fat cells.
Anoop | Wed August 18, 2010
Hi Anatoly,
When it comes to overweight or obese individuals, it is mostly fat and less muscle. And muscle loss is somewhat accepted for these population.
Exercise plays a bigger role in maintaining weight lost it seems. And when the study means exercise, it is mostly walking and cardio stuff.
And I don’t know if anyone has really looked into if weight training helps for weight loss/weight maintenance or if it makes a difference to add to the cardio. Weight training has never been really popular with obesity researchers.
And the study only looked at weight and waist circumference for composition measures.
The reason physical activity is important in maintaining the weigh loss is probably because losing weight makes your muscles more efficient (not only because you’re moving around less weight, the muscles themselves increase their efficiency)http://ajpregu.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/285/1/R183, that pretty much means you have to more more in order to compensate. The effect weight loss has on non resting energy expenditure (it can’t be entirely be explained by increased efficiency) has been shown to be present even after 1 year of maintained weight loss, so it’s probably permanent. http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/88/4/906
I think the other advantage derived from physical activity in terms of maintaining weight is that the calorie burn from exercise (say, 45 mins of vigorous activity > approx 450 cals) represents a proportionally larger percentage of maintenance calories for a dieted-down person than for an obese/overweight person.
That is to say, as a percentage of the 2200 cals maintenance for your average 160lb dieter, 450 cals is significant (20%), whereas for an obese 320lb person on 4400 cals maintenance, the 450 calorie burn constitutes only approx 10%.
The other factor, even more important than the last, is that, once you’ve dieted down to a lean body composition, you’re going to of necessity be eating small amounts of food. In this context, it’s actually easier to do a bit of extra physical activity than to remove the equivalent calorie value from your food intake. While some amount of calorie restriction is necesary, it becomes too onerous under a certain threshold, and thus, will not be volitionally maintained by most dieters.
Cheers
Mav
Anoop | Thu August 19, 2010
The calorie burned depends on your body weight too. So a obese or overweight person burns a lot more than lean individuals. So the calories burned is not always fixed number. This is part of the reason women find it so hard to keep losing bcos of their small BMI.
There are couple of reasons quoted for exercise helping in weight maintenance. Couple of them are: the increase in expenditure with exercise compensates for the decrease in energy expenditure due to weight loss, physical activity adherence can also improve diet adherence.
Good discussion, guys.
I did not read this article as I only need to look at the argument which we have heard a million times which is better high fat or low fat or high carbohydrate intake or low intake at the end of the day for weight loss it is how many calories you burn then you eat and the amount of any fat, carbs and protein you eat all depends on your lifestyle, training, weight loss goal etc and I personaly believe low carb diets lead to decreased energy thus less activity leading to weight gain.
mtfitness
| Thu October 07, 2010
Obtaining most of your nutrients from whole foods is always best, but of course, it can be very difficult to obtain all of the nutrients you need throughout the day; this is where supplements should come in. No products, by themselves, will change your body without any effort on your part. The framework of consistent strength training, cardiovascular exercise, and a healthy diet of complex carbohydrates, protein, and dietary fat will keep you from burning out and you will be much better off and still achive weight loss in the long run.
Anoop | Fri October 08, 2010
Thanks for the comment BJ. I do think the researchers conducted the study because we weren’t really sure about it.
And as you said according “to your personal opinion”, Usually personal opinions are more often wrong than right.
Well from personal experience with myself and others I know Low carb diets don’t work.
FullDeplex | Sat October 09, 2010
That is great to hear BJ, but from my personal experience with myself and other I know low carb DOES work, but both of our arguments are not scientific at all. They are personal experience that is all.
It would have helped if you actually read the article and viewed the research presented for you would have found out that people respond differently to different diet and methods. There are a lot of people having greater succes with low carb diets AND there are also those that have no succes with them. It is unclear why this is, but there are theories.
Let me ask you this:
How many lean people do you know that are not counting calories, are inconsistent with everything, don’t train, are lazy as hell and eat junk food all day. I know a lot of these kind of people, but I also know a lot of people that behave the same way and are as fat as a hippo.
How do you explain that? Calories? 
Bottom line: all diets work, insofar as they result in a net energy deficit, when under controlled conditions (e.g metabolic ward studies).
However, under free-living conditions, the “best diet” is the diet that the subject has the greatest chance of complying with for the long-term. And that’s going to vary from gender to gender, culture to culture, and ultimately, from individual to individual.
In today’s obesogenic environment, people need to actively design an effective eating stratgey that suits them…mindless eating or ‘once-size-fits-all’ diets are equally ineffective.
Cheers
Mav
mtfitness
| Mon October 11, 2010
I agree. There are no 1 size fits all diets. Another thing to note is there is no such thing as a( 30 - 60 - 90 ) day diet. Fitness and proper eating habits are a life time effort.
I aggree it is what suits you some people can do it where as others can’t same with fitness the train of thought is high intense exercise burns weight fast which it does but it might not suit yourself.
Anoop | Mon August 08, 2011
Hi Toni,
I usually have the references at the end of the article. It is at the bottom of the article in blue.
Dane McGuckian | Thu January 26, 2012
Hi Anoop,
If you get a chance, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this review of research:
Low-Carbohydrate Diets Promote a More Favorable Body Composition Than Low-Fat Diets
Volek, Jeff S PhD, RD; Quann, Erin E PhD, RD; Forsythe, Cassandra E PhD, RD
Author Information
Department of Kinesiology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut
Here is a bit of the Abstract: “A PRIMARY CONCERN WITH CONVENTIONAL WEIGHT LOSS APPROACHES IS THE LOSS OF LEAN BODY MASS THAT OCCURS WHEN FAT MASS IS DECREASED. CONSUMING MODERATE PROTEIN, WHILE RESTRICTING CARBOHYDRATE,ALLOWS FOR GREATER PRESERVATION OF LEAN BODY MASS. A LOW-CARBOHYDRATE DIET IN CONJUNCTION WITH PERIODIZED RESISTANCE TRAINING PROMOTES GREATER FAT LOSS WHILE PRESERVING LEAN BODY MASS AND
PROMOTING ROBUST IMPROVEMENTS IN METABOLIC HEALTH.”
Sincerely,
Dane
