.png)
Following a low-calorie diet may not be the best solution for long-term weight loss. (Amal Chen/The Epoch Times)
This time of year we see an upsurge in the number of people wanting to lose weight, often because of the extra body baggage they’ve accumulated over the festive season.
Many people will be tempted to take the oft-touted approach of “eating less and exercising more.” Here’s what we know from the science about these approaches:
• Calorie-controlled diets rarely lead to significant, sustained weight loss.
• Adding aerobic exercise to a diet generally does little to improve the results.
These facts appear to defy logic and common sense. But as I describe in my new book “Escape the Diet Trap,” published on Jan. 6, there are several well-understood mechanisms through which eating less and exercising more destines the majority of us to weight-loss failure.
One thing calorie-controlled diets have been shown to do is to stifle the metabolism, which can be profound. In a seminal study known as the Minnesota Experiment (conducted shortly after World War II), which I describe in my book, a 1,600 calorie-a-day diet led to weight loss of 20 to 26 percent in a group of men over a 24-week period, but their total energy expenditure fell by almost 40 percent.
Many men also became so hungry they obsessed about food and had little interest in anything else. Some of them experienced debilitating physical and mental symptoms.
This was on a diet containing more calories than many weight-loss diets advocate. The diet was also rich in carbohydrate and low in fat—precisely the sort of diet health professionals and our governments usually advocate for weight loss.
Calorie-controlled diets rarely lead to significant, sustained weight loss.
When the men were allowed to eat in an unrestricted manner again, they consumed huge quantities of food. By the time their eating naturally returned to normal levels, their fat levels were, on average, 75 percent higher than when they started.
The Minnesota experiment is just one study, but its findings reflect the experiences of countless individuals:
• Eating less (going on a diet) and losing weight
• Getting hungry and toughing it out
• Having a weight-loss plateau
• Failing and then eating almost uncontrollably
• Regaining weight quite rapidly
• Ending up heavier than they were before dieting
It is the crashing failure of calorie-based approaches to weight loss that cause me to rail against articles such as one in the U.K. NHS online news on Jan. 3: “Many ‘Healthy Snacks’ Are High in Calories.”
The article raises our awareness of the fact that many people are unaware of the calorific nature of foods, including hummus (a blend of chick peas, or garbanzo beans, sesame-seed paste, olive oil, and lemon juice).
Hummus might indeed be calorific, but one could argue that the quality of those calories is decent. All the constituents of this food are essentially whole and minimally processed. It contains a reasonable blend of protein, fat, and carbohydrate. It’s a food that is likely to sustain us quite well.
Could we say that for a not-so-calorific food like spinach or broccoli? I do have reservations about hummus, but this has nothing to do with its calorific nature and is related to the fact that beans and other legumes are relatively rich in lectins, which can be toxic to the body.
Judging a food by its calorific content is misguided at best. Not only does calorie control rarely lead us to lasting weight loss, it can cause us to eschew nutritious, healthy foods in favor of nutrient-
depleted junk (including many processed foods marketed to dieters).Dr. John Briffa is a London-based physician and author with an interest in nutrition and natural medicine. His website is DrBriffa.com.
