If you’re starting a weight loss plan, or have already been following one for a while, chances are that you want to make the results last. Most dieters can lose weight, but the problem is that it doesn’t stay away over the long run. The issue is that there are many reasons diets don’t work over time, regardless of whether or not they take the fat off at some point.
A UCLA study has pointed to a spectrum of reasons diets don’t work and has found that the vast majority of people who try to follow a diet will end up gaining back any lost weight within a relatively short period of time.
The research was led by Traci Mann, PhD, a UCLA associate professor of psychology. Dr. Mann was holding a psychology of eating seminar when she made note of a certain interesting trend in the diet studies she was citing. Very few of the studies that have been conducted provided any follow-up information beyond six months after the completion of the research. Moreover, an even smaller number of studies followed up for longer than a year.
This inspired Mann to discover whether or not dieters were truly keeping the weight off over the long term and, if not, to find the reasons diets don’t work. She was able to find 31 studies that had a minimum of one year’s worth of follow-up data. This allowed her to seek out the number of dieters who had gained back at least the amount that was lost.
What she discovered was that 41 percent of dieters regained more weight than they originally lost when they were dieting. She found that within each of the studies, between one third and two thirds of all the subjects had gained back a larger amount of weight than they’d managed to lose in the first place.
Furthermore, many of the participants regained at least some of the weight, even if it wasn’t more than they had lost. Dr. Mann’s study was published in the American Psychologist journal’s April 2016 issue.
It may be speculated that many dieters simply aren’t taking on efforts that are sustainable over time. For many people, choosing a diet pill such as PhenBlue is only the start. It must be accompanied with the development of healthful lifestyle habits that can be continued into the long term.
