Dieting makes you fat

One of my clients the other day told me that she had "been on a diet for 30 years on and off, but was stubbornly one stone overweight". Clearly dieting doesn't work for her.

Jennifer Savage and Leann Birch from Pennsylvania State University have just published research on this very problem!

A total of 176 women were assessed at baseline and followed over four years to see how their weight changed. There were 3 types of women identified.

1. Those making no effort to control their weights (N)
   
2. Those using healthy strategies (H)
   
3. Those using both healthy and unhealthy strategies (H+U)

Women using a mix of healthy and unhealthy strategies (H+U) gained significantly more weight (4.56 kg) than the N group (1.51 kg) and H group (1.02 kg) over the four year observation period. This was after taking statistical account of things like education, income and initial BMI..

Perhaps not surprisingly, the H+U weight control group demonstrated greater anxiety over weight concerns and restraining their food intake and had poorer eating attitudes than women in the H or N groups.

So what were the strategies these women were using to control their weight?

Healthy strategies included reducing calories and amount of food, eliminating sweets, junk food and snacks, increasing activity, eating more fruit and vegetables, eating less fat or less high-carb food, and eating less meat.

Unhealthy strategies included skipping meals, using diet pills, liquid diets, appetite suppressants, laxatives, enemas, diuretics, and fasting. The women who used these strategies gained weight.

As the researchers point out, the probable reason that women who used healthy weight control strategies were more successful was simply because these strategies are more sustainable. Unhealthy strategies can lead to loss of control, overeating and bingeing, which over time results in increased weight. So it is the way you try to control your weight that determines success.

Another important aspect of this study noted by the authors is that women who worry about their weight were more likely to engage in unhealthy practices. If this proves to be true, simply promoting weight concerns and worries may exacerbate weight problems in the long run.

But the study also shows that women who adopt healthy weight control techniques can very much minimise weight gain over time, even if no actual weight is lost in the long run.

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