The Best Diet For Weight Loss
These days most everyone is fixated on weight loss, and rightfully so. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association more than one third of Americans (34.9%) are obese and this is far more than a cosmetic issue. Obesity dramatically increases the risk for stroke, heart disease, certain types of cancer, and type II diabetes, which are some of the most common causes of preventable death.
Direct costs of obesity have been estimated to be more then hundred and $147 billion in the United States alone, so this is a big problem, no pun intended.
The looming question that is on everyone’s mind’s seems to be what is the best diet a person can adopt to realize not only the most weight-loss but weight loss that lasts.
In fact, our most well respected peer-reviewed medical journals have been publishing data dating back at least seven years indicating that the most effective dietary change to realize significant and lasting weight loss is a diet that’s higher in fat and lower in carbohydrates.
In the now popular A to Z trial, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, researchers conducted a 12 month interventional study comparing a high-fat low-carb diet to a diet focused on reducing fats while at the same time offering up higher levels of carbohydrate. In addition, various cardiovascular blood parameters were evaluated. The study was performed on premenopausal overweight and obese women
The results demonstrated that those women on the high fat low-carb diet lost more weight than those on a low-fat program. In addition, there was a dramatic improvement in various cardiovascular blood studies in the group consuming the most fat and the least amount of carbohydrates compared to those who favored the low-fat program that was higher in carbs.
I hope you’ll take a minute and actually review this study as it has critically important implications not only for heart health but for brain health as well since degenerative diseases of the heart and brain share a commonality of being induced by inflammation. To me, the take-home message of this report, beyond just the weight-loss part of the story, has to do with how this diet, higher in fat and lower in carbs, reduces inflammation and therefore has much broader application in terms of preventive medicine.