QUITTING your diet could help you lose weight and keep it off (but there’s a catch)
IN the quest to lose weight and keep it off there could be one dieting trick you haven't tried yet... QUITTING.
Taking a two-week break from your strict regime could actually help you shed more pounds.
But before you get too excited, there is, of course, a catch. Well, a couple.
First up, after two weeks of no diet, you have to buckle up and get back on it for a fortnight before indulging in another break.
And secondly, on your break weeks you still need to be sensible and eat a healthy diet.
The new findings suggest continuous dieting isn't the key to weight loss.
Scientists at the University of Tasmania in Australia believe it's all to do with the body's "famine reaction".
Professor Nuala Byrne, who led the study, said dieting alters a series of processes in the body, that can lead to slower weight loss and possibly even weight gain.
She said: "When we reduce our energy (food) intake during dieting, resting metabolism decreases to a greater extent than expected, making weight loss harder to achieve.
"This 'famine reaction', a survival mechanism which helped humans to survive as a species when food supply was inconsistent in millennia past, is now contributing to our growing waistlines when the food supply is readily available."
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Prof Byrne's team looked at two groups of men who were obese.
They all took part in a 16-week diet that slashed their calorie intake by a third.
Half maintained the diet for the full 16 weeks, while the second group maintained it for two weeks, then broke from the diet for a fortnight.
During their break weeks the group ate enough calories to keep their weight stable.
They repeated their cycle for 30 weeks, to ensure 16 full weeks of dieting, like the first group.
Not only did those who took a two-week break lose MORE weight, they were also more likely to keep it off after the study had finished.
Their weight loss was an average of 1st 2oz more than the group of continuous dieters, six months after the experiment.
While Prof Byrne said the two-week intermittent diet proved to be a better way to lose weight, other fasting diets - such as the 5:2 diet - were not found to be any more effective than continuous dieting.
This study provide preliminary support for the model as a superior alternative to continuous dieting for weight loss
Professor Nuala Byrne
"There is a growing body of research which has shown that diets which use one to seven-day periods of complete or partial fasting alternated with ad libitum food intake are not more effective for weight loss than conventional continuous dieting," she said.
“It seems that the ‘breaks’ from dieting we have used in this study may be critical to the success of this approach.
“While further investigations are needed around this intermittent dieting approach, findings from this study provide preliminary support for the model as a superior alternative to continuous dieting for weight loss.”
The findings are published in the International Journal of Obesity.
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