New Diet Research: Dieting Might Just Make You Fatter

Oct. 6, 2010 - PRLog -- Most people think that when it comes to losing weight a low calorie, lot fat diet is the way to, but new research in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that this kind of diet may not actually work very well for fat loss after all.  

“The biggest mistake that most people are making in weight loss is focusing on the scale.  This study clearly demonstrates that you can lose weight but actually get fatter.  People really want to look better naked and fit into their old clothes.  You can drop 2 dress sizes and not drop a single pound, or you can lose 20 pounds and end up fatter,” says Brandenburg.

The study had two groups on the same low-fat, low-calorie diet.  Group one got 8.5hrs of sleep, and group two got 5.5hrs of sleep.  With 8.5hrs of sleep, slightly over 50% of the weight lost was actually lean body mass (muscle); and with 5.5hrs of sleep, the over 75% of the weight lost was actually muscle.  

Brandenburg calls this “body composition” which is a way of determining what your body is composed of – how much fat and how much muscle?  He and a lot of new research says that body composition is a much more meaningful measure of progress versus the scale.

Brandenburg scores body composition with points – one point for losing a pound of fat, and one point for gaining a pound of muscle; and vice versa for fat gained and muscle lost.  By Brandenburg’s body composition math nobody in the 8.5hr of sleep group made any meaningful progress.

He says that if you drop 20pounds on the scale and only half is fat, then you’ve lost 10lbs of fat (+10 on the body composition scale), but you’ve also lost 10lbs of muscle (-10).  So the negative and positive 10’s cancel each other out.

For the 5.5hr group (75% of the loss was muscle), 20lbs on the scale would be a negative 10 in terms of body composition: 5lbs of fat lost (+5), and 15lbs of muscle lost (-15).  So, you diet your way fatter, or to worse body composition.

“If a woman gains 15lbs of muscle and loses 15lbs of fat she will not look like He-Man, she will look more feminine.  She will go from a size 12 to a size 8 – that is smaller not bigger even though the scale says nothing happened.  We see this with clients all the time,” says Brandenburg.

# # #

Josef Brandenburg is an award winning Washington DC based personal trainer and author of the body you want. He specializes in helping normal, busy people create the bodies they want in the time that they actually have. www.thebodyyouwant.com