http://channels.netscape.com/ns/hom...ork/dodietswork

The following is a C&P of the above article.


Do Diets Work? Surprising 1 Year Results

Do diets really work? Even when disciplined, dedicated people stick with a diet plan for a year or more, they are likely to only lose about 5 percent of their body weight--far less than most dieters anticipate losing. That means, someone who weighs 200 pounds at the start of a diet can realistically expect to lose 10 pounds in an entire year. But the good news is that losing that 10 pounds can do wonders for heart health.

The Washington Post and Reuters report that researchers from the Tufts-New England Medical Center conducted the first scientific trial that pitted four popular diet plans against each other to assess their individual effectiveness: Atkins, Dean Ornish, Weight Watchers, and The Zone. The study was federally funded.

The study: One hundred sixty overweight and obese men and women ages 22 to 72, who had all tried to lose weight previously and had at least one major risk factor for heart disease, were randomly assigned to follow one of the four diets for a full year. Their average body mass index (BMI) was 35. Anything higher than 29 is considered overweight.

The surprising results:
Atkins: Although almost no carbohydrates are permitted, dieters can enjoy lots of high-fat foods, such as bacon and steak, on the Atkins diet. In this study, 52 percent of the dieters stuck with it for the full year, losing on average 4 percent of their body weight and decreasing their risk of heart disease by 12 percent. Even though the diet encourages consumption of high-fat foods, dieters' total cholesterol dropped by about 3 percent. The "bad" LDL cholesterol dropped 8 percent and the "good" HDL cholesterol rose 15 percent.

Dean Ornish: Half of the dieters stayed with this super-strict low-fat, vegetarian diet for the year and lost on average 6 percent of their body weight, the most of any plan. But their risk of heart disease decreased by only 7 percent, the least of any of the four plans.

Weight Watchers: Similar to the U.S. dietary guidelines, Weight Watchers emphasizes eating low-fat foods. Dieters attend group meetings for expert advice, weekly weigh-ins, and moral support. Fully 65 percent stayed with the diet for the entire year, losing on average 5 percent of their body weight and decreasing their risk of heart disease by 15 percent--the most of all the diet plans.

The Zone: Following The Zone diet requires that all food items be measured by their glycemic index, which is a calculation of how much they raise blood sugar levels. Small amounts of healthy fatty foods are allowed. Sixty-five percent of the dieters continued on the diet for the full year, losing on average 5 percent of their body weight and decreasing their risk of heart disease by 11 percent.

So which diet is best? "The results are modest. The study shows that no single approach has a monopoly on weight loss," Thomas Wadden, director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, told The Washington Post.

The bottom line: The amount of weight you can lose on a diet is not impacted by whether you gorge on carbohydrates or virtually shun them. "Diets work if you use them. They all work probably by the same mechanism, which is that they get people to eat fewer calories," Gary Foster, clinical director of the Weight and Eating Disorders Program at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, explained to The Post.

So it all comes down to this--even with the fanciest diet plans: Eat less. Lose weight.

The study findings were announced at the annual meeting of the American Heart Association.
________


Obese people on Atkins only lost 4% of their body-weight after one year of strict adherence? Oh, please.... I lost about 4-5% on a 2-week induction!

Don't you hate it when the media takes interpretation into its own hands, and never actually reads the studies OR gives links to them? Still, it is a step in the right direction.

They were RANDOMLY assigned. (Sheesh, I'd hate to be one of the poor saps on Dean Ornish's plan. No fat, hardly any protein, and tons of carbs. I'd have thrown off their stats for sure...if I could have stayed on it, which I doubt.)

It sounds whacky to me. My stepmom lost 30 pounds this year on WW, THREE TIMES as much as these people. And that's with a surgery thrown in, during her recovery time she couldnt' exercise (which I think is CRUCIAL for a low fat/high carb plan to work.)

And who are these people? According to the NCS Pearson, they don't have enough of a sample size for a statistically significant result. Still, I'd say this was a bunch of slackers.

Here's the Results from all the diets I have records from --

LF Diet #1 (1996-1997)

Month 1: -6.49%
Month 2: -0.17%
Month 3: -0.87%
Month 4: +0.70%
Month 5: -1.05%
Month 6: -1.41%
Overall: -9.19%

LF Diet #2 (1998)

Month 1: -2.65%
Month 2: -2.91%
Overall: -5.48%

vLF/vHC (1999-2000)

Month 1: -1.38%
Month 2: -0.77%
Month 3: -0.78%
Month 4: -0.88%
Month 5: -0.93%
Overall: -4.67%

Atkins (2002-2003)

Month 1: -3.91%
Month 2: -5.04%
Month 3: -3.94%
Month 4: -4.62%
Month 5: -4.17%
Month 6: -1.98%
Month 7: -1.98%
Month 8: -2.10%
Month 9: -3.06%
Month 10: -2.47%
Month 11: -2.62%
Overall: -31.25% (so far)

I especially liked this sentence "Diets work if you use them. They all work probably by the same mechanism, which is that they get people to eat fewer calories," Did you catch PROBABLY, they really clarified that they had no idea what they were talking about.

The more I hear this "eating fewer calories" stuff the more foaming at the mouth I feel. I'm sure some people do eat fewer calories, as their appetitite is suppressed and/or they are in control of the cravings.
But I have checked it in Fitday...I am eating more calories (about 500-600 MORE) now on Atkins than I was on my LF/HC diet & exercise plan of yore.
Yet I have lost more weight, faster, on this plan.
AUAUAUAUGUGUAUAUGUGUAUAU!
(That was me yelling in frustration.)

I agree that there must be something wrong with their weight loss totals. Everyone I know who correctly completed induction lost at least 8 pounds. Yeah, some of that may be water but it doesn't look like this study was differentiating the different types of weight loss (water, fat, muscle, etc.)

Something else I noticed is that they are basing the reduction in cardiac risk solely on the percentage of weight lost and they only give bloodwork results for those on Atkins (maybe because nobody else's improved or they got worse?).
Cardiac risk is not determined solely by what you weigh. Another good example of how you can skew the data to show what you want the public to see.

Actually, if you look at this version of the study results:
(from http://health.yahoo.com/search/heal...=s&p=id%3A49369 )
you'll see that Atkins was slightly better than WW and the Zone at reducing LDL, and not quite as good as WW (but just as good as the Zone) in increasing HDL. The Ornish diet was significantly better at reducing LDL, but caused almost no increase in HDL. I think the reason they only gave the bloodwork results for Atkins in this Netscape version was because eating more cholesterol and having your cholesterol improve is your basic "man-bites-dog" story (until conventional wisdom catches up with current science)



Well, looking at the clustering of serum lipid results, it would appear that short of a fanatical low-fat approach like the Ornish or Pritikin diets, cardiac risk is primarily determined by what you weigh.

Also, what is a "bum's wrap"? Is that some sort of tortilla-based version of a "po-boy sandwich"?

Not to be too pedantic, but the term is "bum rap", where "bum" means "bad" (not to be confused with a "bum's rush", which is what classy joints do to unwanted undesirables who crash the party.

Actually, cardiac risk in generally determined by a whole host of things including, but not limited to, your cholesterol ratios, your triglyceride levels, family history, smoking history, level of insulin resistance and how active or sedentary your lifestyle is. Your current weight is more of a symptom than it is a cause.
I also didn't see any mention of triglyceride levels which are now thought to be a much better predictor of cardiac risk than either HDL or LDL levels.




This also sounds fishy to me. At my current weight, according to them, I can expect to lose 7.6 pounds in an entire year sticking with my low carb plan. Sounds to me like none of the participants were sticking to their plans "dedicatedly" to be losing less than 1 pound a month. Either that or they picked the most metabolically resistant folks they could find for their study. Especially given the results of this study: http://forum.lowcarber.org/showthread.php?t=148478 where those with PCOS who can be some of the most weight loss resistant folks on the planet (and I can confirm that from personal experience), lost nearly 3 times more weight in 24 weeks than these folks did in an entire year.

I have seen conflicting versions of this story. Most say that the relatively low levels of weight lost are for those people who stuck with their programs for the whole year. But a few versions of the story indicate that those stats include people who dropped out; the people who stayed with the plan for a whole year lost something like 20%. I cannot find the actual study. Has anybody seen it yet?

What I'd really love to know is how the diets effected Triglycerides. I'd bet anything, the Ornish folks had their TGs go through the roof, while the Atkins folks saw theirs fall to double digits [as mine did.] The WW folks probably also saw a rise in their TGs...though, probably not as bad as the Ornish folks. The establishment likes to ignore Triglycerides, because they generally increase when someone eats Sugars, Grain, Alcohol, or Trans-Fat...The first two of which are supposed to be the main components of our diet according to the establishment (AHA/USDA.) OTOH, some fats (w3 and possibly Monounsaturates) lower Triglycerides.

Triglycerides are one of the lipids that get carried through the blood and deposited. Very Good Triglycerides means there's less fat being carried through the arteries, which means a substantially lower risk of Heart Disease. How much you can transport through the arteries (LDL) is far less relevant than how much you are transporting (Triglycerides.) VLDL is the precursor for LDL. So, a low VLDL means less new LDL...which also indicates a reduced risk of heart disease.

I do realize that the possessive was technically incorrect. However, the spelling 'wrap' has been used colloquially for quite some time.... my family's been doing so for at least twenty years, actually. I would assume that 'bum wrap' refers to something that is 'packaged' in such a way as to conceal what is actually inside, like when you place a tiny jewelry box in several larger ones.... or even when a person is careless and tears a bit of the package or whatever is going into it. In this case, the 'packaging' is with words.... very similar to the context of a 'bum rap'.... which, as you pointed out, means something like 'bad talking' or even 'bad rep'.

Just my two cents...

Well, I'm less interested in debating points of word usage (as Dave Barry says about music, we all have our opinions, and yours is wrong ) than in questioning why people are so defensive about this WOE.

Look at the results here -- the Atkins diet went up against Weight Watchers, the Zone, and the Ornish plan and compared very favorably indeed -- this is great evidence to show to those low-fat fanatics who are convinced that we low-carbers are committing Suicide By Sour Cream. How is this a "bum wrap" against Atkins? As Dr. Dansinger himself says, "Instead of saying there is one clear winner here, we are saying they [the diets] are all winners."

This was what they started out to show and that's what they showed. How convenient; the published test results confirm what they wanted to see which is that all diets are pretty much equal and that they all work by calorie restriction plain and simple.
My question, is are they really all pretty much equal? My experience with LF and WW says no, they aren't. They don't publish the triglyceride results, which they had if they did a fractionated cholesterol test on all the subjects. Why?
The average weight loss is way below what we would expect for weight loss in a year of following the plan to the letter for the average person; I'm weight loss resistant and I've lost more than double what they predict. Again, why?
While this shows that Atkins and low carb in general works and won't kill you, which is a step in the right direction, I don't agree that it's no better or worse for you than the other plans it compared against and the study seems suspicious to say the least due to the type of data not reported.