Healthy Cooking Columns

Diet Strategies for Weight Loss and Better Nutrition

The first part of “Diet Strategies for Weight Loss and Better Nutrition” is a review of just that: effective strategies for weight loss. Only by looking through the body of research can one get the whole picture. We read headlines every day that say “If you just do X, you will lose weight,” but, in truth, there is no one single magic bullet strategy that will help you lose weight. Instead, it’s a combination of strategies.

Here are a few strategies that seem to recur across the research landscape:

1. Macronutrients don’t matter. It doesn’t matter whether you eat low carbohydrate, low fat, high protein, high fat, high carbohydrate, or any other mix of macronutrients. Everyone who goes on some sort of calorie-controlled diet loses weight – about 7% to 10% of their starting body weight in the first 6 months to a year.

2. Weight maintenance is key to think about on Day 1. There are lot of good strategies for weight loss, but if you are going to keep it off, you need to think about making a permanent change and not simply “going on a diet.”

3. The five most common strategies for success: Smaller portions, reducing the overall food eaten, more fruits and vegetables, fewer fatty foods and no sugar-sweetened beverages.

4. Exercise. That same study showed that the difference between a successful loser and an unsuccessful one was exercise. That is supported by dozens of other studies and over 46% of successful losers exercised 30 minutes or more each day and about another 45% said that they added some physical activity to their daily routine.

5. Eating about the same amount of calories per day works.

6. Keeping a food diary works. Keeping an online diary works even better, and in one study those using the Internet lost 50% more weight than those using a pen and paper. Interestingly, people seem to like keeping a pen and paper diary more than an online food diary.

7. Taking a picture of what you eat works as well as a food diary. It appears that keeping a photo diary works by making folks think about what they are going to consume before they eat.

8. Weighing yourself every day makes it more likely you will lose weight.

9. Portion size matters. A lot. In many studies, consuming smaller portions works and this doesn’t matter whether it is plate size, bowl size, the size of the actual serving, or the packaging.

10. Yo-yo dieting doesn’t seem to matter as much as we thought. If you lose and gain and then lose again, you are still better off than if you never lost weight in the first place.

There are easily 10 times this many strategies, but these are ones that both seem to be verified in repeat research and are also easily doable for most of us.