September 29, 2009
A buffet of diets
Local dietitians and weight loss experts grade an assortment of popular diet plans for their healthfulness, long-term potential
By KELLY BOTHUM
The News Journal
Delaware Online
Here's one four-letter word that's printable in a family newspaper: diet. We profess to hate them, but it's apparent Americans love them. We spend more than $40 billion each year on diet programs and related products. We devour meal replacement bars, inhale frappe weight-loss smoothies and swallow fat-busting pills, all in the hopes of losing the flab spilling out of our pants and hanging under our arms.
And yet, 67 percent of us are either overweight or obese, according to health statistics last year from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
So why the disconnect between the claims made by popular diets and the actual weight lost by real people who follow the plans? For starters, it's hard to keep up an all-or-nothing eating plan, said Susan Burke March, author of "Making Weight Control Second Nature: Living Thin Naturally." After three days of eating nothing but cabbage soup, you probably never want to lay eyes on a cabbage. Or if a low-carb diet forbids you from eating bread, it's that much harder to keep up the momentum.
"Diets are just that. They are fads that people typically can't stick with," said Stella Volpe, a registered dietitian and research associate with the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. "To do well, people might need to make big change and understand if they want to lose 12 pounds, they're not going to do it in a week."
For more, go to...
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20090929/HEALTH/909290303
