There are many ways to use food to achieve better results when trying to lose weight. One way is to add superfoods to your diet. Superfoods are helpful because they actually increase the body's ability to burn fat. In the latest Study though, it says that cheating on your diet or taking a break from Dieting delivers better results than following a calorie-restricted diet the whole time.
Strict dieting may not be as effective
The Mercury News reported that cheating on your diet may actually help with losing weight. Taking one day a week to eat what you want may be the way to lose a lot more weight.
In a new Australian study published in the Journal of Obesity, researchers discovered that cheat days actually allowed dieters to lose more weight than when they didn't take cheat days. Lead study author Nuala Byrne said that cheat days help with weight loss by preventing adaptive thermogenesis, which means that the body doesn't adapt to the calorie deficit that calorie restrictive diets call for. By adapting to the lower calorie requirements, dieters often regain the weight.
A better way to lose weight
Business Insider reported that in the latest study, although small, it showed that dieters who took a two-week break from dieting lost more weight than those who stuck to a diet for the same amount of time.
Research has shown that the problem with dieting is that dieters often regain the weight after the diet is over. The study was published in Nature's International Journal of Obesity. Researchers used 51 men between the ages of 25 and 54 in the study.
The first group slashed their calories by one-third in a calorie-restricted diet.
The second group followed the same diet, but every two weeks they would take a break from dieting. At the end of the study, the group that had taken breaks lost 47 percent more weight than those who had stuck to the calorie-restricted diet.
Bicycling reported that the reason dieters may be struggling to lose weight is that they're trying constantly to stick to a calorie-restricted diet.
The study at the University of Tasmania had 36 of the men follow a calorie-restricted diet for 16 weeks straight. The second group followed the same diet, only they took a break every two weeks. Their diet lasted longer, 30 weeks, but the dieting time added up to 16 weeks total. The intermittent dieters lost 31 pounds compared to those who lost 20 pounds.
Understanding the latest weight loss trends like these can help with achieving better results and successfully losing weight for good.
