It’s the dieter’s version of “Starve a Cold and Feed a Fever.” Or is that “Feed a cold…?”

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It’s an almost timeless tip offered to persons trying to reduce their weight, a veritable given: Drink a glass of water before every meal; it will fill some space in your stomach and lessen your feeling of hunger. The thing is, this bit of wisdom was like “put butter on a burn”: one of those accepted truths that nobody had actually ever tested, in part because it seemed to make sense.

As it happens, some scientists did test the “butter on a burn” rule and found out that it was nonsense. And now, some other scientists have begun testing the “glass of water before meals” rule, and happily, the results are rather more positive. A study in 2007 found that drinking water prior to meals reduced one’s hunger pangs and calorie intake, while another in 2008 determined that overweight people who drank water before breakfast reduced their calorie intake by 13 percent.

And now comes confirmation from Virginia Tech, where a group of overweight middle-aged people were placed on low-cal diets for three months, with half being told to drink two cups of water before each meal. The water group lost an average of 15.5 pounds, compared to 11 pounds for the dry group.

Unfortunately, there could be a major limitation to the usefulness of the water gambit: it might only work for people of a certain age. The 2007 study, for example, found that the water ploy had no positive effect on subjects under age 35, and the Virginia Tech study was limited to persons 55 or older.

Researchers will invariably test the water effect on various age groups to see how specific it is or isn’t, but until the results are in, it couldn’t hurt those who are young and overweight to give it a try. As “diet aids” go, you certainly can’t beat the price.

Dealing With Boomerang Fat: The Kind that Just Keeps Coming Back

It’s the dieters’ axiom and the dieters’ curse: Anyone can shed some pounds over the short term; keeping them off is the real challenge. Well, according to a new study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine, you can meet that challenge by simply loading up on protein and keeping the carbohydrates to a minimum.

The data: 773 overweight and obese adults who had lost an average of 24 pounds after two months of a low-fat diet were divided into five groups whose diets involved varying proportions of protein to carbs. All subjects could eat as much and as often as they wanted, within those diet restrictions. After six months, only the low-protein, unlimited-carbs group had regained a significant amount of weight — almost four pounds — while the high-protein, low-carb group actually trended toward a bit more weight reduction.

The conclusion: To prevent weight regain, eat lots of meats, fish, poultry and beans, and avoid starchy carbohydrates such as baked goods and pasta. The great virtue of this diet, other than the weight control, is that within its restrictions can eat as much as one wants without having to count calories or shrink portions — which means that the dieter will be much more likely to stick to it.

Sources:
Water Diet — “Water before meal helps some…,” Anahad O’Connor, New York Times, 11/24/10.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

Does the Water Diet Really Work? And the Best Diet for Keeping Lost Weight Lost is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Well, Other Than a Major Amputation, That is

Mark Haub may have provided the answer to several fairly important questions with regard to weight control. Questions such as, if you ate nothing but healthy and nutritious food, would you be able to eat as much as you wanted? Are “fattening” and “unhealthy” the same thing? If you’re trying to lose weight, can you eat whatever you want as long as you don’t eat much of anything?

The answers, based on Haub’s experience, seem to be No, No, and Evidently. Here’s the story.

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Haub is a Human Nutrition professor at Kansas State, and as such, ate wisely: whole grains, plenty of fiber, fruits and veggies, occasional treat meals (burgers, pizza), and so forth. And yet, he seemed stuck on the high side of 200 pounds. He was eating healthily, but, he observes, “I wasn’t healthy. I was eating too much.”

It occurred to him to wonder if perhaps the key to weight loss had nothing to do with nutritional quality, but merely the quantity that one consumed. He decided to try a little experiment with himself as guinea pig. For one month, he determined, he would consume very little other than junk food, but with a strict control on calorie intake. At 211 pounds, he would ordinarily pack away about 2,600 calories per day; he gave himself an absolute limit of 1,800.

But those 1,800 calories were mostly composed of a diet that would make a nutritionist’s head explode. Instead of actual meals, every three hours he would scarf down a few Hostess Twinkies or Doritos or powdered donuts or Kellogg’s Corn Pops or Oreos. He avoided meat, whole grains and fruit. His central focus was on portion control, not nutrition. In all, 2/3 of his daily intake consisted of junk food, augmented by a multivitamin pill, a protein shake, and vegetables such as celery or baby carrots.

The Surprising, and in the Wrong Hands, Dangerous Results

At the end of the month, he found that his weight was down a few pounds, and he felt reasonably okay, so he stuck with the regimen. Finally, after ten weeks of this, he took inventory of his vital statistics. In a little more than two months, he had lost a total of 27 pounds, down to 174, had lowered his body fat from 33.4 to 24.9 percent, and reduced his BMI from 28.8 (overweight) to 24.9 (normal). Even more unexpectedly, his LDL (bad) cholesterol was down by 20 percent and his HDL (good) cholesterol was up by the same, 20 percent.

Had Haub stumbled upon a Miracle Junk Food Diet? Alas, not unless you believe that a human body can survive in good health over the long haul on essentially convenience store food items. What he had stumbled upon were two things we already knew. One, weight reduction is, overwhelmingly, a matter of calorie reduction. Two, excess weight is the primary driver of high blood pressure and high cholesterol, and reducing the former will reduce the latter.

The problem is that “health” is a matter of much more than cholesterol or body fat or even weight, and a diet of few vegetables and no fruit almost certainly has unpleasant longer term consequences. Almost nobody in the health profession would recommend Haub’s example be followed. First, because there are far safer ways to lose weight. And second, because 90 percent of those who might try it would, lacking his discipline, probably wind up continuing to eat too much, but now mostly of junk food.

(By Robert S. Wieder for CalorieLab Calorie Counter News):

The Twinkie Diet: Worst Successful Weight-Loss Program Ever is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News

Contributor: “Dr. J”
Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.

Wanting to provide help to our dieting readers, I decided to pursue an investigation to discover the best diet to follow for weight loss. Because of the importance of avoiding a conflict of interest, I did not include my personal favorite: The Dr. J very hard diet.

The studies:

The first study I looked at was the now classic “Comparison of the Atkins, Ornish, Weight Watchers, and Zone Diets for Weight Loss and Heart Disease Risk Reduction, A Randomized Trial” published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in January, 2005.

The results of Atkins vs. Ornish vs. Weight Watchers vs. Zone:

The average weight loss at one year was 10.56 lbs for Atkins, with 53 percent completing the study, 13.2 lbs for Zone with 65 percent completing the study. 10.78 lbs for Weight Watchers with 65 percent completing the study, and 16.06 lbs for Ornish with 50 percent completing the study.

Each diet in the study modestly reduced body weight at one year. The low rate of people who stayed with their particular diet for the entire year had the greatest weight loss in each group. In my opinion, if this was a horse race, the betters would be waiting for the results of the photo to see who was the winner at the finish.

Four Diets With Different Calorie/Fat/Protein/Carb Ratios

I then looked at a study that compared the possible advantage for weight loss with plans that varied the combinations of protein, fat, and carbohydrates in the prescribed diet.
“>This research was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in February 2009.

The researchers randomly assigned 811 overweight adults to one of four diets. The calories derived from fat, protein, and carbohydrates in the four diets were 20, 15, and six percent; 20, 25, and 55 percent; 40, 15, and 45 percent; and 40, 25, and 35 percent. All the diets consisted of similar food items. In addition, the dieters were offered group and individual instructional sessions for two years.

The results:

At six months, the dieters had lost an average of 13.2 lbs, or seven percent of their initial weight. The study groups began to regain weight after 12 months. The researchers felt that each reduced calorie diet resulted in a similar weight loss regardless of which macronutrient combination was used. Seems like another photo finish to me.

Pre-Prepared and Supplied Meal Substitute Diet

Lastly, I considered two just-published clinical trials of a commercial pre-prepared and supplied meal substitute that claimed to demonstrate effective weight loss strategies for obese and overweight adults.

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, in a one-year intensive lifestyle intervention study of diet and physical activity, had 130 severely obese adult individuals follow one of two dietary plans. One group did a prescribed diet and physical activity for the entire 12 months, while the other group had the identical dietary intervention, but with physical activity delayed for six months.

“To facilitate dietary compliance and improve weight loss, liquid and pre-packaged meal replacements were provided at no cost for all but one meal per day during months one through three and for only one meal replacement per day during months four through six of the intervention,” the authors reported. In addition, small financial incentives were provided. The participants also received a combination of group, individual and telephone contacts as part of the program.

The results:

The group that started with the diet and physical activity lost more weight in the first six months than the delayed-activity group; however, the approximately 25 pound weight loss at 12 months was about the same in both groups. 78 percent completed the study.

2-Year Women’s Lifestyle Intervention Diet

In the second study, researchers from Moores UCSD Cancer Center, La Jolla, California, conducted a randomized controlled trial of weight loss and weight maintenance in 442 overweight or obese women over a two year period.

The women were divided into three intervention groups: in-person, or telephone-based weekly one-to-one weight loss counseling, including free-of-charge prepackaged prepared foods and increased physical activity for 30 minutes a day, five days a week. The participants were eventually transitioned to a meal plan. The third group was the usual care group who received two individualized weight loss counseling sessions with a dietetics professional and monthly contacts. All participants were provided a small monetary compensation ($25) for each completed clinic visit.

The results, after two years:

At 24 months, 92.1 percent had completed the study. The average weight loss for the women participating in the center-based group was about 16 pounds or 7.9 percent of their initial weight, about 14 pounds or 6.8 percent for the telephone-based group, and about 4.5 pounds for the usual care control group.

“Findings from this study suggest that this incentivized structured weight loss program with free prepared meals can effectively promote weight loss compared with usual care group,” reported the possibly incentivized researchers.

The researchers claim that lifestyle interventions, including physical activity and structured weight loss programs, can result in weight loss for overweight, obese and severely obese adults. (And it also helps if you supply free meals and pay them.)

My results:

From what I can tell, it doesn’t matter which standard, well designed, non-fad diet you pick, each one of them in these studies gives comparable results. If you comply with the diet and do the math, you will lose weight. However, the amount of weight lost was, in my opinion, not very much.

Discussion:

I am concerned with this lowering of performance standards for weight loss. Even though all of these diets claim to work, I think the results are nowhere near impressive. Most of these diets basically enabled the dieter to lose less than 10 percent of their body weight in a year, and maintain a five percent loss in two years, unless free meals were supplied, the participants were paid, and intensive support and counseling was done.

In the morbidly obese individual, going from 300 to 280 pounds is almost meaningless from a health and wellness standpoint. Except in the first study, where the term modest was used, the researchers were proclaiming the successful amount of weight loss of the participants. In some ways, I feel this is a form of denial of the real goal they claim to be advocating.

Although some people may choose to interpret these results with the “diets do not work,” mantra, I do not see it that way. Other than the last two studies where the participants were given free food and also paid to lose weight, almost 50 percent of the dieters did not maintain the dietary constraint and commitment for anywhere near the length of the studies. It isn’t that diets do not work, it’s that people will not do the work. Many of you either read websites about individuals, or are individuals who have done a much more impressive job of becoming a healthy weight. These people applied the math. They used a plan of calorie-availability versus calorie-utilization. My thanks to all of you who have proved that it can be done and for reaching out to help others in their successes.

In the end, the best diet to follow is one that you will stick with. If it is a matter of finding what works for you, it doesn‘t really matter which diet you pick, what matters is which diet you will do.

Dr. J Advises on the Best Diet to Follow for Weight Loss is a post from: CalorieLab Diet News