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The Crash Dieting Secret
With summer one month away, you may think it’s too late to get in bikini-ready shape. But new research shows that when it comes to dieting, slow-and-steady doesn’t always win the race.
Here’s a sobering thought: Summer is a month away, and the diet you’ve been meaning to embark on since January remains in the early planning phases. A crash diet seems to be your only option—but aren’t crash diets ineffective routes to sustainable weight loss?
Not if you approach them correctly. A healthy, low-calorie diet can work wonders, even in just a few weeks, and clinical experience shows that somebody with a serious commitment to weight loss can lose up to 20 pounds—and two to three clothing sizes—in a mere eight weeks. That’s a lot of weight, and an enormous change in appearance for most of us. Best of all, according to the latest research, a hard-and-fast approach to dieting, if done right, can yield results that will probably stand the test of time just as well as the long-term diets that emphasize incremental gains.
For many people, fast weight loss actually appears to bring long-term success equivalent to more gradual weight-loss programs—reason for procrastinators everywhere to rejoice.
The conventional wisdom about more rapid weight loss leading to rapid rebound is, happily, not being supported by research. For many people, fast weight loss, if achieved with a healthy, calorie-cutting food-based diet, actually appears to bring long-term success equivalent to more gradual weight-loss programs—reason for procrastinators everywhere to rejoice. In fact, for some people, healthy crash dieting may work even better than a diet that lasts all year. A recent study from my lab at Tufts University found that the slow-and-sensible approach seems to be sustainable only by those folks who are not sidetracked by rich food, free food, and other common challenges in daily life.
What about even faster weight loss? You know those diets: the ones that promise to dissolve 36 pounds in one month, or 18 pounds in four days. Unfortunately for anyone planning on stretching out their new-and-improved bod on a chaise longue this weekend, such diets are pure snake oil. Crash dieting can work, but there’s a threshold. It’s a physiological fact that the human body is only capable of losing a maximum of about 3.5 pounds of actual fat per week, even if you eat nothing at all. Greater weight losses than this may occur for a week or two if you put yourself through the wringer of fruit-juice fasts, purges, or Master Cleanses, but you won’t lose any more fat—just water, intestinal contents, and sometimes muscle thrown in for good measure. That’s the kind of weight that will bounce right back after a barbecue or two.
The only crash diet that truly works is one that allows you to lose real fat and lose it as fast as sustainably possible. But how do you make it work well and, in particular, how do you avoid common concerns like plateaus? By cutting enough calories. It’s a little-known fact that many popular diets don't cut as many calories as really needed, because they don't deal with the hunger factor well enough to go further. These diets do achieve short-term weight loss with a combination of small calorie cuts and low-sodium meals that cause water excretion, but once water balance stabilizes, you plateau and feel like your dieting is getting nowhere.
So the first principle of successful dieting is to get calories low enough to reliably cause ongoing, serious fat loss. In practice, this means getting daily caloric intake down to something like 1,200 calories a day if your starting weight is 120-160 pounds, or to 1,800 a day if your starting weight is 200-240 pounds. Several research studies have shown that at this level of intake, calorie requirements don't decrease anywhere near enough to make you plateau, so fat continues to be pulled from fat cells and real fat weight continues to slide off.
John Talks Joe
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
The Diet Killer
Director of the Energy Metabolism Lab at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center and professor of Nutrition and Psychiatry at Tufts University, and author of a new approach to weight loss called The Instinct Diet, which was recently featured in The Daily Beast.
The New Fat Hazard
Director of the Energy Metabolism Lab at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center and professor of Nutrition and Psychiatry at Tufts University, and author of a new approach to weight loss called The Instinct Diet, which was recently featured in The Daily Beast.
Why Restaurants Make You Fat
Director of the Energy Metabolism Lab at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center and professor of Nutrition and Psychiatry at Tufts University, and author of a new approach to weight loss called The Instinct Diet, which was recently featured in The Daily Beast.
I've been led to believe that the human body is actually fairly bad at distinguishing thirst from hunger. So, what I do when I feel hungry is have some water. If I'm still hungry in 15-30 minutes, then I eat.
Oh, and being skinny just makes sense in the summer, as putting on pounds does for the winter. It's basic physics that a skinny person has an easier time keeping cool in the summer as a chubbier person has an easier time staying warm in the winter. The principle is related to the relationship between surface area and volume. A ball will lose heat the slowest, a stick the fastest.
Thank you, Daily Beast, for encouraging women to starve themselves so their bodies can fit into a narrow standard determined by fashion designers (a standard that most American women cannot achieve naturally).
Your next article should be the Auschwitz Diet - eat one bowl of Bunker Soup a day (just 300 calories) and watch the pounds melt away!
Obesity and Smoking are the #1 and #2 preventable killers in America, the fattest country in the history of the world.
Yep, I second that - thank you Daily Beast! I don't second the rest of it though.
I think maybe I should stick up for this author. You assume the part about starving out of ignorance. I read the book, followed the plan, wasn't hungry at all and finally fit into my normal clothes that I was "storing" so I am grateful. We are not all like you, some of us need a little guidance. Thank you Daily Beast.
I'm confused. How does exercise play into this. If I follow this diet plan and increase my level of exercise at the same time is that okay?
There's so much information out there that I'm incredibly confused. I used to think that I could eat whatever I wanted as long as I put in time at the gym... and it seemed to work, I lost weight, but I fell off the gym routine and gained half of it back. Now that I was getting ready to start going to the gym again I've been reading that exercise isn't as effective as watching your food intake.
Uff! This is confusing.
Because this woman got Tina to let her promote her book on this site and pose it as writing a nutrition column, her first column explained clearly that the only solution is her science based diet book. No exercise will help you lose weight.
TDB = Cosmo.
What's next, the Carrie Prejean guide to increasing bust size?
On January 1st I made only one New Year's resolution....to lose weight. I lost 33 pounds in less than four months, and my method was very similar: A bowl of high fiber cereal and a small non-fat yogurt for breakfast, and a large bowl of salad with lots of fresh vegetables and olive oil and balsamic vinegar dressing for lunch and dinner. I eat nothing else except an occasional piece of fruit as a snack. The first couple of weeks were difficult, but once my stomach shrank and I lost the sugar and carb cravings I adapted very well. Every time I think of indulging in a high-calorie meal I take a look at my new shape in the mirror and remind myself why I'm not going back to my old eating habits. I look and feel 20 years younger. Bring on the salad!
Actually your stomach does not shrink. That is a myth. But you said that after a couple of weeks you lost your sugar and carb cravings, and that is definitely possible. Sugar, fat and salt are very addictive, which is why it is so hard to stop after just one potato chip or one cookie. But if you can stay away from them long enough, you can break the cycle of cravings for those diet killers and really lose weight.
I don't know why it is so hard for people to understand this simple calculus: to lose weight, consume fewer calories than you burn. That's it, simple as that.
Consume fewer calories then you burn... that does make it simple .
So I used an online calulator. I supposedly I burn about 1690 calories in a day. Or 2000 on a day I exercise. Not sure what role metabolism plays in this but I think I'll give this diet a shot. Thanks Iolanthe!
arithmetic, actually. even easier.
This all makes a great deal of sense. 1,200 happens to be the number of calories I eat ( whatever I burn off exercising) when I want to lose weight. If you eat low fat, high fiber, low glycemic foods, that's a lot of food. I eat six 200-calorie meals a day, and it really feels like a lot. I'm at a healthy weight. This works!
GREGORYABUTLER: Take it somewhere else. What you say is sometimes true, but that's clearly not what she's doing here if you bothered to read the column.
Exercise is never bad, and ALWAYS helps weight loss. See IoIanthe's post... my best friend's wife is a nutritionist and she told me the same thing: all that matters is calories in vs. calories out. All of the crazy diets out there are just fancy ways to mask that fact.
CORRECTION: I meant to say that I eat 1,200 calories per day however many calories I burn through exercise. FingBruges is absolutely right: exercise is never bad and ALWAYS helps weight loss.
Exercise helps with weight loss only if you control your caloric intake. It's not unusual for people to exercise instead of limiting calories, and that's when things get out of whack. Sometimes after a big cardio workout people gorge on carbs afterwards and it gets you nowhere.
This diet works and the best part is it helps you lose fat, not muscle and water. When you are 50 like me, it's great to lose 30 pounds and avoid anything else sagging. Oh, and learn how to keep it off for good.
I can't imagine anyone more qualified to write a "nutrition" column than Dr. Roberts. She's spent her life doing this and you're getting well researched science, an easy diet plan to follow. Yeah, she has a book, and one worth buying if you need to learn how to eat to get weight off and keep it off.
I can't believe the nagaholics. Don't shoot the messenger. Fat kills..
The northamerican woman's '20 pound crash diet' advice column = the northamerican man's late-night 'Ron Jeremy Extenzor' penis pill advertisements
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I heard a piece on NPR recently. Lynn Neary profiled a couple of diet book authors, one of whom was kind of loopy. But the other author presented in first-person experiential comic-book form what Roberts' book advocates, which is counting calories and eating healthy foods that satisfy hunger efficiently. THAT book (The Big Skinny) sang to me, not because it said anything new -- it's the same old message of burning more calories than we take in -- but in the way the author showed how she did it and illustrated everything so clearly.
I'll pick up The Instinct Diet, too -- it promises to contain useful information. And whatever helps me stay in the 130s instead of drifting back up into the 170s where I was for too long is O.K. by me.
And to those who put down weight loss information: maintaining a healthy weight has increased my energy, helped me get through menopause with fewer negative symptoms, and seems to have slowed bone loss since I now am able to do presses and lunges without whining. This isn't just about vanity and dress sizes, although I must say looking younger and fitter helps my mood a lot, too.
Equating articles like this - which appeal to adults willing to suspend critical thinking skills, buy into a fad, and avoid reality - with a parent-child discussion about responsible weight-loss is categorically insane.
Thank you.
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