And Yet More Crash Diet Myths Exposed |

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5248427156_03af8171ac_m Quite some time ago now I wrote a post called is Crash Dieting Safe and Can It Work? Here is the follow-up to this post with more up-to-date data and information from a recent study from Australia .

And apparently what they say is put behind you. What has been said in the past and forget steady dieting the best way to get rid of excess weight is to lose it fast. From what they say not only was it wrong but there was no proof to back it up.

And now it seems as more and more people put on weight the advice now is to shed it faster rather than slower. Even certain health care professionals are starting to come around to this way of thinking, but the big problem is it isn’t reaching people who are trying to lose weight and eat healthily.

Katrina Purcell, is a dietician in Australia and is head of the research in debunking the crash diet myths.

She got hold of some data from dieticians and nutritionists and was alarmed to find that 99 percent of the people they were consulting were told to use the steady-state form of dieting rather than the quicker approach.

She was quoted as saying this: “Some 99.2 per cent of nutritionists and dieticians say they recommend to their patients gradual weight loss over more rapid,” she says.

“However, there is absolutely no scientific evidence to support their claim.” And she adds, with more than 60 per cent of Australians now overweight or obese, the ‘slow and steady’ message doesn’t seem to be having much effect.

Katrina however, does want to offer a word of caution she says that she does not necessarily recommend crash dieting and nor does she recommend fad diets either.

When the study was done it was under controlled conditions, and help was available most of the time to the participants in case of any problems.

Here is what she did, she compared the results from some people in one group, which used the quick method. They lost 1 1/2 kilograms over a period of 12 weeks, and these results were compared to participants using the slower method.

All the people on the study had a body weight of 100 kilograms and aBMI of 30. When the results were finalised they found the people in the quick group had a 83 percent success rate, in reaching their 15 percent weight loss goal.

Compared to the other group which had a 50 percent success rate, Katrina seems to think that the reason for this is purely psychological but is keeping an open mind and hoping to find if there may be other reasons for it.

She said: “Those people in the rapid group remained more motivated and were able to see the results coming,” she says. “Those in the gradual group were more prone to becoming disenchanted.”

In the steady-state group, the dropout rate was a lot higher compared to those in the rapid group. An endocrinologist had this to say about the findings.

One of the things that is said a lot about losing weight quickly is if you tend to crash diet it slows your metabolism down, but he says that is nonsense, here is what he said.

“Before, after and during weight loss programs there is hardly any variation in a person’s metabolic rate,” he says. “I have an expensive machine which measures the metabolic rate and shows it may possibly drop back 50 to 100 calories during a period of rapid weight loss.

“But this can be dealt with by adding another 10 minutes of exercise a day.”

If you are thinking about trying crash dieting, please do it with caution and do let a healthcare professional know exactly what you are going to do.

This post is purely for educational purposes only it does not mean that I recommend that people start to crash diet in order to lose weight quickly. What are your thoughts about crash dieting? Would you consider doing it? And do you think it’s safe? And has it worked for you.

Please leave a comment in the comment’s section, below so we can discuss this in more detail.

Source: http://www.heraldsun.com.au