Every few months it seems like there is a new BEST weight loss diet. Big claims are made about their effectiveness when in reality, the best diet doesn’t have a fancy name or any strict rules to follow. Unless, of course, rules are your thing and you make your own that you can stick to long-term that fit your lifestyle…but those rules are designed to be flexible…ok, moving on…
This is the first blog in the category “Study Summaries”. Blogs listed as Study Summaries will summarize important aspects of popular or helpful studies and give you important things to consider depending on the topic. As I mentioned in this Sugar Talk blog, nuance is important!
The Study
The study in question is called Comparison of weight loss among named diet programs in overweight and obese adults. It is a meta-analysis, meaning it compares many studies on the same topic, sort of like a summary of evidence.
This study compared the effectiveness of different diets on weight loss. Diets like Atkins (low-carb), Jenny Craig, Ornish (low-fat), South Beach, Volumetrics, and Weight Watchers…there were more, but you get the idea…
The Results (what they found)
Simply put, they found that no single diet was better than another. Here, a graph from Examine.com shows the almost identical weight loss numbers after 12 months. And that’s the goal right? To find something that will stick long term?
Why low-carb lost more weight at the start
You may notice on the graph above that the low-carb groups lost more weight in the beginning. This is actually a very common pattern in low-carb and very-low carb weight loss diets.
The initial increased weight loss on a low-carb diet is likely “water weight”, not necessarily fat tissue. Water weight can mean a couple different things. In the dieting/nutrition world, it refers to the carbs stored in our muscles, which we use for energy. Each unit of carb stored in our muscle is accompanied by 3 units of water.
When we stop eating carbs, the stored carb in our muscles get used up but don’t get replenished and it looks (on a scale) like we lost more weight. As soon as we eat carbs again, those stores get refilled and (on the scale), it looks like we gained weight. This weight is often misinterpreted as fat loss/gain.
What Makes a Successful Diet?
A successful diet considers more than just how much weight was lost. We want to avoid yo-yo dieting after all.
In fact, yo-yo dieting can make fat loss even harder down the road. Fat storage cells in our body can grow or multiply or become more sensitive. In turn, they work harder to stop weight loss from happening, putting up metabolic roadblocks to make weight loss even more difficult.
This is because our body just inherently doesn’t want to lose weight. According to our biology, it’s counter-intuitive. I’ve touched on this topic in my blog How Your Brain Secretely Sabotages Your Intention to Eat Healthier.
Diet change isn’t always about weight loss
Weight loss is not always a necessity for health improvement either. Making changes to your diet doesn’t even have to be about weight loss. We can make changes to our diet for so many other worthwhile health reasons. Like increasing fibre in your diet to help lower cholesterol levels, or choosing sugar-sweetened drinks (like pop) less often to lower your risk of pre-diabetes and diabetes.
For many reasons, the actual amount of weight we lose is out of our control. Or atleast not directly in our control…weight loss is not something we can do.
Weight is not a behaviour.
Since weight is not a behaviour, it may not be the best goal for health improvement. It is essentially a [potential] outcome. If weight loss is an outcome you want, then there are things you can do to achieve it. Those are the things that should be focused on, not necessarily the number on the scale.
The number on the scale can tell us if the things we’re doing are working. From there, we can adjust them. Weight can be a data point used to manage behaviours.
Exercise and Behaviour Change
The study found two things to be most common across succesful weight loss diets: exercise and behaviour change.
Exercise
Among its endless physical and mental health benefits, exercise can help with weight loss and is an effective anchor in the long term goal of weight loss maintenance. I’m not talking bodybuilder style workouts here, I mean things like walking daily and maybe even doing some sort of resistance training a couple times a week.
One thing I would like though, dear reader, is for you to consider that exercise is not simply a weight loss tool. It is much more than that. Reasons to exercise include things like heart health, bone health, mental health, muscle health, insulin sensitivity…the list goes on! To exercise only because of weight is missing the forest for the trees.
To learn more about how much and what type of exercise is recommended, check out the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines here.
Bonus: If you’re currently not exercising but you start now (or tomorrow), you actually experience the most benefit; even more than someone who is already exercising and starts doing more. Start small. Start so small that you can’t not do it. Make it easy. Make it simple. Walk for 5 minutes after dinner.
Behaviour Change
Behaviour change often coincides with some sort of counselling. Counselling in this sense, refers to education sessions and trouble-shooting with a dietitian or other health professional to find the best ways for you to make change happen.
Counselling sessions are more prominent at the front-end of studies like this one. The first 6 months will have more sessions with a dietitian than the final 6 months. For example, meeting once or twice per week at the beginning, tappering off to once a month towards the end.
The more often people meet or speak with a dietitian/health care professional, the higher likelyhood of success. This was shown to be true in this study, where success in the first 6 months was most associated with behaviour change, where success in the final 6 months of the study was more correlated with exercise.
Learn more about behaviour change on the Habitrition resources page (click here). As you’ll see, one of the main books recommended is called Atomic Habits. In this book you’ll learn the best ways to implement small, sustainable change that compounds over time to improve your health.
In Summary
When compared to each other, weight loss among the diets were all similar. In other words, all diets were equally effective. In more words, the best diet is the one that fits your lifetsyle, leaves you feeling satisfied, and is sustainable for you long term.
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