Originally published August 15, 2012 at 10:55 PM | Page modified August 15, 2012 at 11:42 PM
Diet news is never just plain good.Good would be something like "Eating chocolate causes you to lose weight and gain lean muscle mass, study finds."
The latest, out of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is not like that.
Yo-yo dieting, researchers have found, actually doesn't change your metabolism and make it harder to lose weight in future efforts, as widely believed. So just because you've lost and gained, lost and gained, lost and gained, you now have no excuses. Do it again. And likely, again.
Dr. Anne McTiernan, of The Hutch's public health-sciences division, the senior author of the study published online by the journal Metabolism, sees the results as a half-full kind of thing.
"A history of unsuccessful weight loss should not dissuade an individual from future attempts to shed pounds or diminish the role of a healthy diet and regular physical activity in successful weight management," McTiernan said.
The study was designed for a slow, steady and reasonable amount of weight loss 10 percent of body weight within six months and maintenance for the next six with daily calories of 1,200 to 2,000, calculated by each woman's beginning body weight.
Earlier studies have suggested that repetitive weight loss-regain cycles may increase a dieter's preference for dietary fat, perhaps because of changes in metabolic rate, immune function and body composition, the authors noted. But few studies have actually examined this notion, which suggests that somehow dieting causes a person's body to become more efficient at holding onto fat, they said.
For the study, McTiernan and her colleagues enrolled 439 overweight to obese, sedentary Seattle-area postmenopausal women, ages 50 to 75.
Obesity, the researchers said, is a known risk factor for many cancers, as well as for heart disease and diabetes, and with two-thirds of the U.S. population overweight or obese, it's a worry for those in public health.
Read more:
Mythbuster: Yo-yo dieting no deterrent to future weight loss, study reveals
