Periodically I get asked about diets and acupuncture for weight-loss. My standard answer includes something about the basic fact that weight loss is difficult and there is no magic pill. Eating a healthy, balanced diet is critical and developing a regular exercise program is a must. Still many people tell be that they are eating well and exercising, but for some reason cannot lose the weight. In this case, with acupuncture and herbs we work on improving the metabolism. Others have difficulty developing a healthy lifestyle, that includes a balanced diet (no, the 4 food groups are not fast food, junk food, chocolate and coffee) coupled with regular exercise. In this case the practitioner works with the patient to help them get through the roadblocks in developing a healthy lifestyle. This can be an ongoing process. The topic of Diets opens up a large can of worms. Their are so many Diets out there, and everyone seems to be The Expert on what to eat. Here’s my take: focus on a balanced diet that emphasizes fresh whole foods, including organic produce, grains and protein sources. Obviously avoid ‘empty calories’: ‘foods’ that taste great (even are addictive) with low nutritional content and high calories. Read labels and avoid chemicals and words you don’t understand. Whole foods are the entire food, unprocessed (lots of nutrients get lost when foods are canned and frozen). This means avoiding even processed grains, such as flour and baked goods. Instead eat whole grains: rice, quinoa, amaranth, millet and so on. (You’ll find all of these in the bulk section of the natural food store, such as Whole Foods, Earthfare, Greenlife, and food co-ops). Anna Maria Colbin discusses this concept at length and has authored many books on the subject. I studied with her at the Natural Gourmet Cooking School (http://www.naturalgourmetschool.com/) when I lived in NYC, and am heavily influence by her ideas and approach because it just makes sense. Anna Marie talks about how to tell if something is a fad diet. Here’s a few tests: How long has The Diet been around? Less than 5y, 1y? FAD Are your food options severely restricted to a few odd items: grapefruit, pancakes, etc? FAD Do you just follow the diet for a specified time period: say a few weeks or until you lose the weight, and then go onto another way of eating? FAD Does the diet prescribe a way of eating the is healthy to continue for the long term, or are there food groups, vitamins and minerals and so on that are missing from the diet so that it would be unhealthy to eat that way as a life practice? FAD Did the Diet come from a book that sold so many copies that the author (usually a doctor) made a lot of money and became a celebrity? FAD So what you are looking for in terms of diet is a way of eating that will sustain you in an optimal level of health for the long term; hence, eating a balanced diet based upon whole foods . The New England Journal of Medicine just published the largest-ever study of weight loss methods which concluded that it doesn’t matter whether one follows low carbs, low fats, Atkins, Dean Ornish, Mediterranean diet, the main thing is to control calories. All of these various approaches yield the same percentage results of weight-loss and maintenance. I’ve included a New York Times article discussing the study results, below. This copy is for your personal, noncommercial use only. You can order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers here or use the “Reprints” tool that appears next to any article. Visit www.nytreprints.com for samples and additional information. Order a reprint of this article now. February 26, 2009 Study Zeroes In on Calories, Not Diet, for Loss By TARA PARKER-POPE For people who are trying to lose weight, it does not matter if they are counting carbohydrates , protein or fat. All that matters is that they are counting something. That is the finding of the largest-ever controlled study of weight-loss methods published on Wednesday in The New England Journal of Medicine . More than 800 overweight adults in Boston and Baton Rouge, La., were assigned to one of four diets that reduced calories through different combinations of fat, carbohydrates and protein. Each plan cut about 750 calories from a participant’s normal diet , but no one ate fewer than 1,200 calories a day. While the diets were not named, the eating plans were all loosely based on the principles of popular diets like Atkins, which emphasizes low carbohydrates; Dean Ornish , which is low-fat; or the Mediterranean diet, with less animal protein. All participants also received group or individual counseling. After two years, every diet group had lost — and regained — about the same amount of weight regardless of what diet had been assigned. Participants lost an average of 13 pounds at six months and had maintained about 9 pounds of weight loss and a two-inch drop in waist size after two years. While the average weight loss was modest, about 15 percent of dieters lost more than 10 percent of their weight by the end of the study. Still, after about a year many returned to at least some of their usual eating habits. The lesson, researchers say, is that people lose weight if they lower calories, but it does not matter how. “It really does cut through the hype,” said Dr. Frank M. Sacks, the study’s lead author and professor of cardiovascular disease prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health. “It gives people lots of flexibility to pick a diet that they can stick with.” Dr. Sacks said that to reduce bias the researchers avoided associating any of the diets with well-known commercial eating plans. While attendance at counseling sessions was linked with better weight loss, that was not true for every dieter. In some groups, people lost large amounts of weight even though they attended only a few counseling sessions. The real question for researchers, Dr. Sacks said, is what are the biological, psychological or social factors that influence whether a person can stick to any diet. “The effect of any particular diet group is minuscule, but the effect of individual behavior is humongous,” Dr. Sacks said. “We had some people losing 50 pounds and some people gaining five pounds. That’s what we don’t have a clue about. I think in the future, researchers should focus less on the actual diet but on finding what is really the biggest governor of success in these individuals.” Home Health Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company
Original post:
Study Finds No Difference in Low Fat, Carb or Protien Diets for Weight-loss.
