One Hint to Help Decide Between a Low-Fat or Low-Crabs Diet

It is easily understandable how, what with all the debate on a variety of diets, one may get confused as to what is best or most efficient.

A new study aims to shed some light on the issue and tick the balance in favor of low-fat diets as a long-term solution for fat shedding. The study, led by NIH researchers measured a low-fat diet against a low-carbs diet and concluded that on the long run, low-fat is a few inches ahead of low-carbs diets.

Ideally, a balanced nutritional plan is recommended. However, given that it is easy to get lost in the labyrinth of ‘DOes’ and ‘DON’Ts’ and abundantly conflicting information on what is a balanced nutritional plan for whom, the NIH researchers suggest it’s better to keep things simple.

The federal guidelines for a healthy nutrition have just done away with the imposed restrictions on fat. However, this doesn’t mean that all fats are good. As such, the NIH team suggests, keeping your diet low on fats and exercising regularly has a greater impact on shedding body fat than restricting carbs intake.

Processed low-fat products are the healthiest of options, so we should do our best to avoid them and all the sugars and additives that try to make up for the lost nutritional value. A low-fat diet does not imply taking a look back at the low-fat craze of past decades.

How did the research team reach the conclusion that a low-fat diet is more efficient than a low-carbs diet?

19 consenting adults were confined to a strictly controlled experiment, much like a laboratory one. Throughout the two weeks of the study, they remained in the precincts of the housing at their disposal while their diet and their levels of exercise were strictly supervised by the researchers.

Monitoring is of course, implied. Levels of nitrogen, carbon dioxide or metabolites in the body were measured daily.

While the participants, all obese, started out with a 2,740 calories daily plan, after a few days, the researchers assigned to two groups either the low-fat diet or the low-carb diet. During the two weeks of the study, participants were encouraged to exercise for one hour daily.

In the absence of outside distractions and craving-inciting cues, the participants did great. All of them lost body fat. With the difference that the ones in the low-fat diet group lost more than the others.

On average, the former group shed 463 grams of fat, while the latter group shed 245 grams. That is great news for both groups. What the researchers suggest is that low-fat diets simply work better on the long-term.

With all the monitoring and these results, they created computer simulations that showed that on average, participants who had been assigned the low-fat diet would continue losing on average up to six times more fat than the participants who were assigned the low-carb diet over the following six months.

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