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Can Dieting Really Help Lose Weight? Obesity epidemic has been a global issue. Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of Americans who were obese more than doubled, from 15 percent to 31 percent of the population. In England, 25 percent of adults and 14 percent of children were found to be obese in 2009, according to the Department of Health’s latest Health Survey for England. It has also been predicted that 60 percent of Britons will be obese by 2050, which means more cases of diabetes, heart disease and cancer will be emerged. While there are many ways to lose weight, most people would choose either dieting or exercising. However, scientists have confirmed that most overweight people who try to lose weight in either of these two ways will return to their former size. Statistics showed that fewer than 10 percent of the 12 million Britons who go on diet each year could succeed in losing significant amounts of weight. In fact, most of the dieters put all the weight back again within a year. What the scientists from the Medical Research Council’s National Survey of Health and Development have concluded was that people should avoid getting fat in the first place. After following 5,362 men and women from their birth in 1946 and 20,000 from birth in 1958, they measured their weight and blood pressure and assessed their lifestyles. The researchers found both groups began gaining weight in the 1980s and have steadily increased in size ever since.
The findings that were released in July 2011 further provided evidence of 'yo-yo dieting', a phenomenon in which people are trapped in a cycle of losing weight and regaining it. The researchers pointed out that once people become overweight, they continue relentlessly upwards, and seldom go back down. For men, weight would go up steadily through life, but for women, it would start gradually and accelerate in the mid-thirties. According to experts’ explanation, human beings are programmed to put on weight rather than lose it. Dieting would decrease calorie intake and trigger the body to go into starvation mode. This would ultimately reduce the amount of energy it naturally expends, and make it even harder to lose weight. Nonetheless, people should not interpret the findings incorrectly. Dieting is still important as eating less and taking more exercise could increase fitness and lower blood pressure. In 2007, researchers from University of California, Los Angeles (ULCA) reported in April issue of ‘American Psychologist’, the journal of the American Psychological Association, that people would not lose weight and keep it off if they diet. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small number of participants, while majority of the people regained all the weight. They conducted believed to be the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of diet studies by analyzing 31 long-term studies. For every study, researchers followed people on diets for 2 to 5 years. Most of the participants would have been better off if they did not diet at all. Their weight would be about the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back. In the first 6 months, people on diets typically lose between 5 and 10 percent of their starting weight. Nevertheless, at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regained more weight than they lost within 4 or 5 years, and the true number might be significantly higher. Researchers concluded that diets are not effective in treating obesity because the benefits of dieting are well too small and the potential harm is too large. In fact, evidence has suggested that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function. Several studies had indicated that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain. One study found that both men and women who participated in formal weight-loss programs gained significantly more weight over a 2-year period than those who had not participated in a weight-loss program.
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