Yo-Yo Dieting Is Better Than Staying Fat
Saturday, August 20, 2011 at 4:31AM
Ideally, everyone who needs to lose weight could do it successfully and permanently, but that doesn't often happen. Until now, repeatedly losing and regaining weight - yo-yo dieting - has been regarded as harmful. But that belief may soon be challenged if a new study in mice proves correct. Since it isn't practical to test the lifetime effects of yo-yo dieting on humans, researchers at Ohio University put three groups of 10 mice each on one of three diets: high-fat, low-fat or a yo-yo diet, which alternated four weeks of high-fat food with four weeks of low-fat food over the lifespan of the mice. Then researchers then compared the weight, body fat and blood sugar of all the mice. They found that the average health of the yo-yo group was better than the health of the mice on the lifelong high-fat diet. The yo-yo mice also lived 35 percent longer than the high-fat diet mice, and their lifespan was similar to that of the mice on the low-fat diet. Based on these results, the investigators speculated that the negative effects of yo-yo dieting might be overemphasized.
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Reader Comments (4)
I do agree with you, that dieting sometimes and eating normally sometimes (as a result weight fluctuates) is better than being permanently obese.
I wonder if this study was more about a high-fat diet than about yo-yo dieting. What if the obesity was based on too much healthy food compared to yo-yo dieting. hmmm...
It is an Interesting study, though, since we've always been told, even very recently, that being somewhat overweight was better than yo-yoing.
I don't know that we can really start to draw conclusions that yo-yo dieting isn't harmful, or may even be good for you. To me these results just go to show that eating healthy some of the time is better than never at all. Every little bit helps.
I would imagine that there are a lot of other factors to the health impact of dieting than just the fat content of the food, correct? My concern with YoYo dieting is that people might not be getting the proper nutrients out of their food.