In which tiki raves on about fad diets

[tikistitch]

Usual disclaimers apply, tiki actually is a real doctor, but not that kind of doctor!!! Anyways, been meaning to comment on this:

Atkins beats other diet plans in study

CHICAGO - The low-carb, high-fat Atkins diet gets high marks in one of the biggest, longest head-to-head studies of popular weight-loss plans, beating the Zone, the Ornish diet and even U.S. guidelines. Even so, critics say the results show how hard it is to lose weight and keep it off.

Overweight women on the Atkins plan lost more weight over a year than those on the low-carb Zone diet. And they had slightly better blood pressure and cholesterol readings than those on the Zone; the very low-fat, high-carb Ornish diet, and a low-fat, high-carb diet similar to U.S. government guidelines.

Stanford University researcher Christopher Gardner, the lead author, said the study shows that Atkins may be more healthful than critics contend.

Anyways, we went off to consult the original article (which you can find online here, though tiki can't guarantee you'll get to see it for free). If you haven't read an actual original research paper before, then by all means, you should, they're a load o' laughs.



From the abstract:

Design, Setting, and Participants Twelve-month randomized trial conducted in the United States from February 2003 to October 2005 among 311 free-living, overweight/obese (body mass index, 27-40) nondiabetic, premenopausal women.

Gotta love those free-living fat ladies! Go, obese patients, and be freeeeee!!

Anyways, there's a lot of boring parts about how they selected people and how many people withdrew (can't believe the number of ladies who got pregnant from dieting, but there ya go). Anyways, since we have no patience, we immediately skipped over to look at the pictures. Please squint with us at Figure 2:



This is how much they actually lost over the study period, which, remember was 12 months (= 1 year, ha, math is teh kewlz!!!). It's in kilos, to be more scientifical, but if you have a pocket calculator and know how to multiply by 2.2, you can see that the Atkins people ended losing a grand total of about 10 lbs. Over a year. That's, er, less than a pound a month. And the Atkins people were the "winners" (the Yahoo link, amusingly enough, is actually titled "diet_Atkins_triumph"). Now, we tend to be the impatient type, but would you go buy a magazine at the grocery checkout if it promised, "Lose 10 lbs in 12 months!" No, probably not.

Note, also, please, the shape of the Atkins line (they're the triangle people). See something unsettling between the 6 and 12 month mark? Like, they started gaining back the weight? Next time we have to listen to an Atkins acolyte blurble something like, "I've lost 7 pounds and kept it off for 6 month," we're gonna taunt, "Yeah, and you're gonna GAIN A KILOGRAM in the next 6 months, cf. Gardner et al. 2007, hahahaha!" We love footnoting our snark. We're mean like that.

We can only echo the comment by Yale dude Kelly Brownell, who's really eminent and knows stuff:

The study "shows that nothing works very well," said Yale University food policy researcher Kelly Brownell. His book promoting diet and lifestyle changes similar to national guidelines was used in the study.

(Yeah, he's got a book--they all do.)

Comments

[animejump.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I took a look at this when it got kicked around last night and noticed that none of these fad diets come close to matching the ol' proven "eat less, exercise more" formula. I am a little annoyed at this paper's publication, though, because the Atkins fad was really starting to die down (it warms my heart to see Atkins-branded food at the dollar store) and this will give it a litle extra life.

[tikistitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, science is slow--the Methods state they started enrolling patients for this study back in 2003, which means they were prolly planning it back when Atkins was still frothing.