Want to Lose Weight? Which Diet? Apparently it doesn't Matter

Is it time to lose some weight again? If so, you have a big decision make. Which diet should I choose? There is a new diet making the news headlines every week. They all claim to have found the secret to fat lose. Well it turns out the choice is simple, pick any of these diets, they all work the same.

It turns out that in a study done by the Harvard School of Public Health and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of the Louisiana State University System found that it really doesn't matter if you follow a low-fat, low-carb, high-protein or vegetarian meal plan. What really matters is how many calories you are taking in.

It really quiet simple: Calories ingested minus calories burned needs to equal a negative number to lose weight. If you are trying to maintain your weight the number needs to be close to zero.

The study was published in the New England Journal of Medicine and it compared several diet plans with varying degrees of fat, protein and carbohydrates intake and found that weight loss occured on all of the plans as long as you consumed less calories than you burn.

The author of the study Dr. Frank Sacks, a professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health, says, "It doesn't really matter much the specific type of diet. See what suits you best. The focus should be on reducing calories. That's what really counts."

The study involved 811 overweight volunteers and randomly assigned them to follow one of four diets: -

• Low-fat, average-protein diet made up of 20 percent fat, 15 percent protein and 65 percent carbohydrates.
  
• Low-fat, high-protein diet of 20 percent fat, 25 percent protein and 55 percent carbohydrates.
  
• High-fat, average-protein plan containing 40 percent fat, 15 percent protein and 45 percent carbohydrates.


• High-fat, high-protein diet of 40 percent fat, 25 percent protein and 35 percent carbohydrates.

All groups kept their saturated fat consumption to less that 8 percent a day, along with at least 20 grams of dietary fiber. All participants also engaged in 90 minutes of physical activity each week.

The study went on for two years with each participant entering their diet and exercise into a computer log. After six months, all participants had lost an average of about 13 pounds. After two years, the average weight loss was down to 6 or 7 pounds. Blood pressure and cholesterol levels where also recorded and where similar between the groups.

Dr. Sacks says. "The bottom line... if you want to lose weight, eat a heart-healthy diet and be very careful about how much you eat."