Calories Matter - Not The Type of Diet Plan

Feb. 26, 2009 - The kind of diet doesn't matter, scientists say. All that really counts is cutting calories and sticking with it, according to a federal study that followed people for two years.

Some previous studies have found that low carbohydrate diets such as Atkins work better than a traditional low-fat diet. But the new research found that the key to losing weight boiled down to a basic rule - calories in, calories out.

It doesn't matter if you focus on low-fat or low-carb.

The study, which appears in today's New England Journal of Medicine, was led by Harvard School of Public Health and Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana.

Researchers randomly assigned 811 overweight adults to one of four diets, each of which contained different levels of fat, protein and carbohydrates.

Though the diets were twists in commercial plans, the study did not directly compare popular diets. The four diets contained healthy fats, were high in whole grains, fruits and vegetables and were low in cholesterol.

Nearly two-thirds of the participants were women. Each dieter was encouraged to slash 750 calories a day from their diet, exercise 90 minutes a week, keep an online food diary and meet regularly with diet counselors to chart their progress.

There was no winner among the different diets.

People lost 13 pounds on average at six months, but all groups saw their weight creep back up after a year. At two years the average weight loss was about 9 pounds while waistlines shrank an average of 2 inches. Only 15% of dieters achieved a weight-loss reduction of 20% or more of their starting weight.      

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