Diet And Weight-Loss: Don't Pick Your Favorite Foods When You Really Want To Shed The Pounds

If you want to lose weight, it's probably not the best idea to go off a modified version of a diet that involves your favorite foods. 

New findings published in the Annals of Internal Medicine reveal that picking a weight-loss plan based on your food preferences could indeed backfire and lead to less weight loss or even potentially weight gain.

"[The difference in weight loss] was not statistically significant," admitted study author Dr. William Yancy Jr., a research associate in the Center for Health Services Research in Primary Care at Duke University, in Durham, N.C., according to Health Day. "The weight loss was similar between the two groups. It's just that the direction of effect was not even in the expected direction."

For the study, which lasted 48 weeks involving both group and telephone counseling, researchers theorized that by allowing some people to choose a diet that included foods they liked, they would stick with it and lose more weight than those who were assigned to their diets. Furthermore, they even allowed some the option to switch diets 12 weeks after if they were unhappy with their initial decision. However, few decided to do so.

For close to 48 weeks, participants used both books and printed handouts as well as telephone and group counseling to follow respective diets; this involved 105 people choosing between a low-carbohydrate diet and a low-fat diet. Among these participants, 58 percent chose a low-carb diet, and 42 percent chose a low-fat diet. For a separate group of 102 people, the researchers assigned a low-fat diet to 52 percent of the people and a low-carb diet to the other 48 percent, according to Live Science. 

Almost a year later, those on their own plan lost an average of 12.6 pounds whereas those assigned to certain diets lost around 14.7 pounds.

Previous research comparing the effectiveness of low-carb diets and low-fat diets showed that both can work, as long as they are properly followed. While they are both effective, depending on preference for either types of food, we're more likely to lose weight if we're eating a diet based on foods that are not our favorite. Furthermore, researchers believe this is because we are more likely to overindulge in the foods we like.

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