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Saw this in the NY Times...couldn't resist. Reminds me of when I quit dieting in college: I got better grades, generally felt better about my life, and saw my weight stablize for the first time EVAH.
On the Scales: Non-Dieters Weigh the Same, but They're HappierI have to wonder about the "improve health" comment tho. Did the non-dieting group's cholesterol, BP, endurance, cardiovascular health, or other measurement improve during the study? It would be interesting to know.
June 14, 2005 By NICHOLAS BAKALAR
Dieting is not necessarily the royal road to good health.
In a paper published this month in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, researchers found that obese women who used a nutrition and behavior approach that ignored weight and body mass index, or B.M.I., a common measure of weight in relation to body size, were psychologically healthier at the end of a two-year trial period than those on conventional weight-loss diets.
( Nondieters lost no weight during the trial. Dieters initially lost weight, and then gained it back, showing no weight loss after two years. ) Differences between dieters and nondieters in total cholesterol, H.D.L. cholesterol, L.D.L. cholesterol and blood pressure were insignificant at the end of the study. But nondieters felt significantly better about their bodies and showed highly significant decreases in depression, as measured by a widely used test.
"There is an extraordinary amount of scientific research that documents that dieting is not an effective health or weight-loss strategy," said Dr. Linda Bacon, the lead author. But, she said, "there is abundant research to show that when people make lifestyle changes, they improve health."
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