Yo-Yo dieting might not be such a bad thing after all, experts have said.
revious studies found that people who go through an endless cycle of losing weight then piling it back on could be harming their health.
But a leading researcher in the US has found evidence suggesting yo-yo dieting is better than not dieting at all.
Dr David Allison said: “What we found is that when we make mice who are obese keep on repeatedly losing and gaining that weight, they live longer than the mice that are allowed to stay obese.
“So we think it’s probably not a bad idea to lose weight even if you… gain it back and redo it every few years.”
The senior scientist at the University of Alabama Nutrition Obesity Research Center said the recent study on mice has not yet been published.
Dr Allison was speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston, Massachusetts.
Professor Susan Jebb, a nutrition scientist at the University of Oxford, backed Dr Allison’s comments.
She said: “I agree with the notion that losing weight is generally worthwhile, even if you put the weight back on.
“We have good evidence from long-term follow-up studies after controlled intervention studies in humans that there is a benefit.”
Describing a study into yo-yo dieting, she said one group lost around a stone and gradually regained it over four years. These people “reduced their risk of diabetes by 58% compared to a control group who lost little or no weight”.
She said the risk was still 27% less when the weight of the two groups had been about the same for a decade.
But Professor Timothy Spector, a genetics expert at King’s College London and author of The Diet Myth, said yo-yo dieting should be “avoided at all costs”.
He added: “Data in humans shows yo-yo dieting makes you gain weight long term.
“In our study of 5,000 twins the yo-yo dieter was usually heavier long term than the identical twin who didn’t diet."
0 comments: