Nature reveals that low-fat diets don’t really help you lose weight:
An analysis of 53 weight-loss studies that included more than 68,000 people has concluded that, despite their popularity, low-fat diets are no more effective than higher-fat diets for long-term weight loss.
And overall, neither type of diet works particularly well. A year after their diets started, participants in the 53 studies were, on average, only about 5 kilograms (11 pounds) lighter.
“That’s not that impressive,” says Kevin Hall, a physiologist at the US National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland. “All of these prescriptions for dieting seem to be relatively ineffective in the long term.”
The study, published in The Lancet Diabetes and Endocrinology, runs counter to decades’ worth of medical advice and adds to a growing consensus that the widespread push for low-fat diets was misguided.
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No matter what the diet, the key to weight loss is to burn more calories than are taken in. Fats contain more than twice as many calories per gram as proteins or carbohydrates. It seemed logical, then, to reduce fat as a means of reducing calories overall, says Hall.
No one knows for sure why this strategy failed, says Tobias. But often those fats were replaced by carbohydrates, which can leave dieters feeling less sated and more prone to snacking.