A calorie is a calorie is a calorie

In a recent much hyped-study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers took more than 800 obese people (average BMI over 31), randomized them into one of four calorie-restricted, weight-loss programmes (the kind that are widely followed out there such as Atkins and South Beach and low-fat) and followed these people for over 2 years.

And to really help these folks, on top of the diets, many of these “highly-motivated” study participants also received a ton of counselling – as much as they could stand, I’m sure.

In other words, if anyone could succeed at losing weight on a diet, it would be these “pampered” people.

But the end result will surprise no one, I’m sure:  there were really no differences in the diet groups, and very few dieters did well in the long-term.

That is, no matter what the diet gurus try to tell you, a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, so the fewer calories you take in, no matter whether those calories come from protein, fat, or carbs, the more weight you lose – for a while at least, perhaps even up to a year.

But after those first few months, most (although not all) the study participants started to quickly re-gain most of their lost pounds most likely because they had started to eat way more than they were supposed to eat since as we all know, dieting gets very boring after a few weeks, and the longer you stick to a diet, the more boring it becomes, so that at the end of 2 years, the average weight loss was only about 6-7 pounds, which is not much at all given all the resources and effort that went into convincing these people to stick to these diets.

Also notable is the fact that the biochemical changes (cholesterol levels, and others) didn’t differ much in any of the study participants who lost equal amounts of weight.

In other words, it’s the drop in total calorie itnake, not the kind of calories you eat, that may help you improve your biochemical profile.

And finally of note, and this happens in every weight-loss study, some study participants did manage to lose spectacular amounts of weight, although the researchers, to their credit, say that they have no idea why.