WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - A short study found that people trying to lose weight did better when they ate the same meals regularly and kept their calorie intake steady, instead of eating a wide variety of foods.
'Conventional wisdom around dieting says you should incorporate a lot of different foods to avoid getting bored and that you should splurge on the weekends or special occasions so you don't feel as deprived,' lead author Charlotte Hagerman of the Oregon Research Institute, Springfield, Oregon, told Medscape Medical News. 'This contradicts research showing that consistency makes your behavior more habitual, that is, more automatic or effortless.
'We wanted to formally test these competing ideas in a group of people trying to lose weight,' she explained. 'Maintaining a healthy diet in today's food environment requires constant effort and self-control. Creating routines around eating may reduce that burden and make healthy choices feel more automatic.'
Researchers at Drexel University studied 112 adults living with overweight or obesity. All participants were part of a structured weight-loss program. The researchers focused on the first 12 weeks of the program because people usually lose the most weight during this time, and they are more consistent with tracking what they eat. Over time, people tend to stop tracking as carefully.
Participants were asked to record everything they ate each day using a mobile app. They also weighed themselves daily using a wireless scale. A 'full day' of tracking meant logging at least 800 calories on at least 75% of the study days. The researchers then looked at how consistent each person's diet was. They measured two things - calorie stability and food repetition.
The results showed that people who ate similar meals more often and kept their calorie intake steady lost more weight. On average, they lost about 5.9% of their body weight, compared to 4.3% for those who ate a wider variety of foods. The study also found that when people reduced the number of new or unique foods they ate, their weight loss improved. For example, every 10% drop in new foods in the diet was linked to a 0.5% increase in weight loss.
'If we lived in a healthier food environment, we might encourage people to have as much variety in their diet as possible,' explained Hagerman. 'However, our modern food environment is too problematic. Instead, people may do best with a more repetitive diet that helps them consistently make healthier choices, even if they might sacrifice some nutritional variety.'
Interestingly, people who had bigger differences in eating habits between weekdays and weekends also lost more weight. However, researchers said this result could be misleading. Notably, the study had some limitations as it only included people who were highly consistent with tracking their food, so the results may not apply to everyone. Also, since the data was self-reported, people may have underestimated how many calories they actually consumed.
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