Think you can lose the most weight by putting down that piece of bread?
Apparently you also need to put down that piece of cheese.
A new study funded by the National Institutes of Health found that people who cut dietary fats lost 68 percent more body fat than people who cut carbohydrates. The finding turns conventional dietary thinking on its head, as the popular Atkins diet has for decades taught Americans to shun bread.
“Our data tells us that when it comes to body fat loss, not all diet calories are exactly equal,” said Kevin Hall, lead study author, in an NIH press release. Hall said that while both diets worked, the reduced fat diet worked better.
“Compared to the reduced-fat diet, the reduced-carb diet was particularly effective at lowering insulin secretion and increasing fat burning, resulting in significant body fat loss,” Hall said. “But interestingly, study participants lost even more body fat during the fat-restricted diet, as it resulted in a greater imbalance between the fat eaten and fat burned. These findings counter the theory that body fat loss necessarily requires decreasing insulin, thereby increasing the release of stored fat from fat tissue and increasing the amount of fat burned by the body.”
Despite the findings, Hall urged people to pick the diet that works for them.
The real world is “more complicated than a research lab, and if you have obesity and want to lose weight, it may be more important to consider which type of diet you’ll be most likely to stick to over time,” he said.
There are numerous types of dietary fats, and some are good while some are bad.
The worst types of fats are saturated and trans fats, which can raise your cholesterol and increase heart attack and diabetes risk, according to the Mayo Clinic. Saturated fats are most likely found in animal sources of food such as red meat, poultry or full-fat dairy products such as butter and cheese, Mayo said.
Most trans fats come from partially hydrogenated oils that are easier to cook with. In June, the Food and Drug Administration decided to cut trans fats in processed foods including baked goods such as cookies and cakes, coffee creamers and microwave popcorn.
Researchers in the NIH study looked at 19 non-diabetic men and women with obesity, all eating the same food and doing the same activities.
For the first five days of the study they all ate the same thing. Over the next six days they switched to diets containing 30 percent fewer calories through either cutting carbs or fats.
During a second visit the patients switched diets.
The study provides “invaluable evidence on how different types of calories affect metabolism and body composition, said Griffin P. Rodgers, director of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.
