Low-Fat Diet or Low-Carb Diet? Which is the Best Way to Lose Weight?

It has been widely believed that a low-fat diet is an effective way to lose weight. However, a new research suggests that this might not be the case.

Medical News Today (MNT) shared that  a new study analyzing the findings of previous researches about weight loss revealed that having a low-fat diet is not the best way to lose weight in the long run. This comes along with their other finding which emphasized that low-fat interventions only account to an average 2.7 kg weight loss after a year.

In order to arrive at this conclusion, the researchers performed a meta-analysis of 53 studies in which 68,128 adults were covered.

The researchers focused on the efficiency of low-fat diet in helping in weight loss as compared to other types of diet over "minimum duration" of one year.

Furthermore, the study also considered the intensity of the diets wherein the fact that the participants just received mere instructions or underwent complex processes and interventions were taken into account.

From the 53 studies reviewed and analyzed, the researchers found 19 studies that used a control group in which the low-fat diet is compared.

As cited by the report, the effectiveness of low-fat diet cannot be calculated from the said studies with control group as the only comparison that the studies made were against those whose diets did not underwent proper intervention.

"Low-fat interventions were favored only in comparison with interventions of lesser intensity, particularly those in which controls were only asked to maintain their usual diet," Dr. Deirdre Tobias, PhD, from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA, said via MNT.

The lead researcher also highlighted that their study, which can be considered as one of the biggest of its kind, showed that there is not enough evidence that will prove that low-fat diet is the most effective way for weight loss.

Previously, a small-scale study was reported wherein a low-fat diet was found to be more effective in losing weight when compared to a low-carbohydrate diet. But with the results of this recent study, the effectiveness of low-fat intervention and other diet types has been placed in question once again.

Weight-loss diets have been continuously practiced in order to fight obesity which has been a growing problem not only in the US but all over the world. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention cited obesity is related to the development of conditions such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and some types of cancer.

"To effectively address the obesity epidemic, we will need more research to identify better approaches for long-term weight loss and weight maintenance, including the need to look beyond differences in macronutrient composition - the proportion of calories that come from fat, carbohydrate, and protein," Dr. Tobias explained in the report.