So far, a slow and deliberate approach is recommended when losing weight. But the long-term success of a diet seems to be greater if the weight reduction is fast.
Slow and deliberate - that's the way most dietary advisers can get their advice when it comes to slimming down. For example, the German Nutrition Society advises that there is always some exercise in everyday life and that a little less calories are spilled on the plate, that realistic goals are set and only one to two kilograms a month.
But the current study situation points in the opposite direction. Therefore, hard diets have the best chance of success.
An international team of researchers analyzed the scientific data on traditional dietary rules for the New England Journal of Medicine, and the slow-and-thought-out approach turned out to be a stubborn but scientifically unproved myth.
Old formula for losing weight
So the advice is to change small habits, for example more often using the stairs instead of the elevator. But this tip goes back to a more than 50-year-old rule, according to which one loses - about 450 grams of weight per saved - when eating or agitated by movement - 3500 kilocalories.
This formula is again based, as Study Director Krista Casazza emphasizes, "on short-term experiments with men who have been set to only 800 kilocalories per day".
Such findings can not be transferred to longer periods of time and less hard reductions in energy intake, the American nutritionist said. Here applies rather: "Minimal effort brings even minimal effects."
Ambitious goals are helpful
This does not mean, however, that small changes do not work. There just have to be many. In addition to climbing stairs so you should also introduce cycling instead of driving and at midday on the sweet dessert and in the evening on the chips in front of the TV.
As persistent as the concept of small steps is also the thesis, according to which the diet-willing should set no utopian goals, so that the 110-kilo man should not hope to have slimmed down to 90 kilograms within half a year.
That sounds reasonable, because it protects against frustration, Casazza reports, "but the empirical evidence shows that you can lose weight better with ambitious dietary targets."
Discipline is an important requirement
This assessment is confirmed by a recent study conducted by Utrecht University's Emely de Vet. The Dutch psychologists used questionnaires to record the expectations and dietary efforts of 447 overweight men and women.
More than 60 percent of volunteers set a target for the first year of dieting that exceeded the five to ten kilos of weight loss normally recommended by nutritionists.
These ambitious participants, however, also proved to be particularly disciplined in their efforts to reduce weight. Which did not necessarily mean that they actually achieved their high goals. But discipline in any case provides the best conditions for really implementing a diet program.
Lax goal seduce to carelessness
Conversely, lax diet scales often lead to the opposite. For whoever decides to lose only five of his 100 kilos in the first year, will be more merciful in certain situations, such as an invitation to eat or even a tempting display at the bakery, according to the motto: "Is not that bad, I'll manage those few kilos anyway. "
But in the end, after repeated negligence, he will most likely only make the statement that the pointer on the scale still remains in the same place.
This disappointing result threatens even if show only moderate weight loss in the first few weeks of a diet. In fact, this "slow weight loss effect" is actually a prerequisite for ensuring that weight loss remains stable and does not regress immediately in favor of the notorious yo-yo effect.
Sounds logical - but does not have to be right
The idea behind this is that body and brain should have time to get used to weight loss, because then they control less, for example with food cravings and a slowing of the metabolism, on the other hand. That, too, sounds logical - but, as Lisa Nackers and her team of researchers from the University of Florida found out, this is also a fallacy.
The American scientists analyzed the data from 262 obese women who participated in the so-called Tour Treatment for Obesity in Underserved Rural Settings.
In this program, women were given intensive support to eat less and get more exercise - with the ambitious goal of cutting 0.45 kilograms per week.
Fast weight loss brings more success
Subjects who lost more than 680 grams a week in the first month, five times more likely to achieve the target of 10 percent weight loss five and a half years later than their diet colleagues, who initially lost less than 230 grams a week.
For Nackers, therefore, it is clear that early rapid weight loss "leads to greater weight loss and overall long-term weight management success."
Better, the kilos tumble right from the start happy, because then they are not so fast again. The reason for this is above all psychological: the greater the initial success, the greater the motivation for the future.
In the end, it's a psychology thing
Anyone who sees soon after the start of the diet, as the scale pointer moves conciliatory to the left, this evaluates as a positive finger to continue the Abspeckmühen, while a slow weight loss rather nourishes the doubt.
Overall, recent studies show that the long-term success of a diet depends less on the contents of the plate than on the attitude of the person emptying it. It matters less about how complex the carbohydrates are and how high the protein and fat content of the food is than about how ambitious, motivated and disciplined one pushes his slimming program.
"The psychic theories and models of success", explains Emely de Vet, "are also valid for a diet." If you want to lose weight, you have to think about it as you do for many other areas of life: It is not least the will that moves the mountains.
Slow and deliberate - that's the way most dietary advisers can get their advice when it comes to slimming down. For example, the German Nutrition Society advises that there is always some exercise in everyday life and that a little less calories are spilled on the plate, that realistic goals are set and only one to two kilograms a month.
But the current study situation points in the opposite direction. Therefore, hard diets have the best chance of success.
An international team of researchers analyzed the scientific data on traditional dietary rules for the New England Journal of Medicine, and the slow-and-thought-out approach turned out to be a stubborn but scientifically unproved myth.
Old formula for losing weight
So the advice is to change small habits, for example more often using the stairs instead of the elevator. But this tip goes back to a more than 50-year-old rule, according to which one loses - about 450 grams of weight per saved - when eating or agitated by movement - 3500 kilocalories.
This formula is again based, as Study Director Krista Casazza emphasizes, "on short-term experiments with men who have been set to only 800 kilocalories per day".
Such findings can not be transferred to longer periods of time and less hard reductions in energy intake, the American nutritionist said. Here applies rather: "Minimal effort brings even minimal effects."
Ambitious goals are helpful
This does not mean, however, that small changes do not work. There just have to be many. In addition to climbing stairs so you should also introduce cycling instead of driving and at midday on the sweet dessert and in the evening on the chips in front of the TV.
As persistent as the concept of small steps is also the thesis, according to which the diet-willing should set no utopian goals, so that the 110-kilo man should not hope to have slimmed down to 90 kilograms within half a year.
That sounds reasonable, because it protects against frustration, Casazza reports, "but the empirical evidence shows that you can lose weight better with ambitious dietary targets."
Discipline is an important requirement
This assessment is confirmed by a recent study conducted by Utrecht University's Emely de Vet. The Dutch psychologists used questionnaires to record the expectations and dietary efforts of 447 overweight men and women.
More than 60 percent of volunteers set a target for the first year of dieting that exceeded the five to ten kilos of weight loss normally recommended by nutritionists.
These ambitious participants, however, also proved to be particularly disciplined in their efforts to reduce weight. Which did not necessarily mean that they actually achieved their high goals. But discipline in any case provides the best conditions for really implementing a diet program.
Lax goal seduce to carelessness
Conversely, lax diet scales often lead to the opposite. For whoever decides to lose only five of his 100 kilos in the first year, will be more merciful in certain situations, such as an invitation to eat or even a tempting display at the bakery, according to the motto: "Is not that bad, I'll manage those few kilos anyway. "
But in the end, after repeated negligence, he will most likely only make the statement that the pointer on the scale still remains in the same place.
This disappointing result threatens even if show only moderate weight loss in the first few weeks of a diet. In fact, this "slow weight loss effect" is actually a prerequisite for ensuring that weight loss remains stable and does not regress immediately in favor of the notorious yo-yo effect.
Sounds logical - but does not have to be right
The idea behind this is that body and brain should have time to get used to weight loss, because then they control less, for example with food cravings and a slowing of the metabolism, on the other hand. That, too, sounds logical - but, as Lisa Nackers and her team of researchers from the University of Florida found out, this is also a fallacy.
The American scientists analyzed the data from 262 obese women who participated in the so-called Tour Treatment for Obesity in Underserved Rural Settings.
In this program, women were given intensive support to eat less and get more exercise - with the ambitious goal of cutting 0.45 kilograms per week.
Fast weight loss brings more success
Subjects who lost more than 680 grams a week in the first month, five times more likely to achieve the target of 10 percent weight loss five and a half years later than their diet colleagues, who initially lost less than 230 grams a week.
For Nackers, therefore, it is clear that early rapid weight loss "leads to greater weight loss and overall long-term weight management success."
Better, the kilos tumble right from the start happy, because then they are not so fast again. The reason for this is above all psychological: the greater the initial success, the greater the motivation for the future.
In the end, it's a psychology thing
Anyone who sees soon after the start of the diet, as the scale pointer moves conciliatory to the left, this evaluates as a positive finger to continue the Abspeckmühen, while a slow weight loss rather nourishes the doubt.
Overall, recent studies show that the long-term success of a diet depends less on the contents of the plate than on the attitude of the person emptying it. It matters less about how complex the carbohydrates are and how high the protein and fat content of the food is than about how ambitious, motivated and disciplined one pushes his slimming program.
"The psychic theories and models of success", explains Emely de Vet, "are also valid for a diet." If you want to lose weight, you have to think about it as you do for many other areas of life: It is not least the will that moves the mountains.
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