The Best Diet Study

Exercise and Weight Loss - Which is the Best Diet to Lose Weight?

Which is the best diet?

If you have ever wondered which is the best diet to follow to lose weight, then you are not alone.

There are so many diets and diet plans around - the Adkins Diet (the Atkins Diet), the Zone Diet, Low Calorie Diet, High Protein Diet, SouthBeach Diet, not to mention weight loss pills etc...

Well, researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center and the Harvard School of Public Health have tested four popular diets -- high fat diet, high carb diet, high protein diet and low-fat diet -- to see which resulted in the greatest weight loss.

The diet tests took two years and involved 811 participants and it turns out "all the diets were winners. They all produced weight loss and improvements in lipids, reduction in insulin. The key really is that it's calories. It's not the content of fat or carbohydrates, it's just calories."

This is good news as it makes things a lot simpler, just pick the diet you like best!

In the study a quarter of participants were put on a carbohydrate-heavy diet, some on high-fat, others on low-fat and the remaining on high-protein diet.

Results showed that it didn't matter which diet people followed to lose weight, most participants had significant weight loss after 6 months, with an average weight loss of 13 pounds.

Sessions were organized with dieticians and those participants who had higher attendance in the sessions had greater weight-loss results. "These findings together point to behavioral factors rather than macronutrient metabolism as the main influences on weight loss". Motivation and discipline are key factors.

"No one of those diets is necessarily better than any other diet," Sacks said.

All the diets followed were compatible with American Heart Association guidelines.

Depending on the diet they followed, participants ate a wide range of carbohydrates, fat and protein, from healthy foods, such as olive oil, pasta and nut butter.

Based on these results, the study recommends that you choose "the diet you feel most comfortable that is healthy, that appeals to you in terms of what foods are in it, that isn't a drastic crash diet. Whatever allows you to keep the calories down and not feel really deprived."

Cindy Moore, Director of Nutrition Therapy at Cleveland Clinic said the basics of losing weight can be summarized as - limit the calories consumed so that you take in less than your body needs or increase activity to burn more energy. Hey I said that in my last post - Best Way to Lose Weight - you don't need to diet, just eat less and exercise more!

It's a slow process but the study shows it's not what diet you follow it's how discplined you are at sticking to it that counts. So just keep on keeping on!