Study shows dieting should be about health first and foremost

Mar 4, 2009 20:21 GMT  ·  By
Dieting should also focus on health, and not just on the immediate weight loss, experts say
   Dieting should also focus on health, and not just on the immediate weight loss, experts say

Dieting has become such a common practice these days that we often forget that health should be our main concern, and definitely not losing weight fast, no matter the long term effects it has on our body. A new study made at the Harvard School of Public Health and published in the New England Journal of Medicine comes to stress, once again, the dangers of fad dieting, while also revealing that all such regimes are useless if the calorie count is too high, as LiveScience points out.

The study, conducted over a period of two years on more than 800 overweight people offers irrefutable proof that diets are useless if they’re oblivious to the calorie count. The main factor that would ultimately make us lose the desired weight is making sure that the calories consumed are below the level of those we burn. This, the study indicates, makes choosing one diet or another irrelevant, because it’s what they include that matters in the long run.

Another important aspect that we should bear in mind when choosing to operate such a major lifestyle change as dieting is that the focus should always fall on being healthy. “Looking good in spandex is one thing; having healthy organs and a cardiovascular system is other. Fad diets tend to fail you with the latter.” LiveScience reveals, saying that this trend of diets that promise the world in just a few days (that is, losing many pounds over a short period of time) is doing us more harm than good. This happens because they are mostly meant to work in the short term, with their consequences often being brushed aside and ignored.

The study has also included the all-too-popular Atkins diet, which has been shown to return the promised results in terms of weight loss, but at the cost of being unhealthy for the body. “The most sensible diet for total body health – for weight maintenance and organ and joint health – remains to be low in fat and high in complex carbohydrates mostly derived from plants, despite our hunger for fast results from fad diets.” LiveScience underlines.

Although it could prove extremely hard to combine both health and a weight loss plan, health experts can’t stress enough the importance of at least trying to do so. Eating moderately and working out represent, so far, the best and healthiest ways of losing weight and maintaining in top shape.