Based on a recent study comparing five different low-carb diets, you should think about the quality of the food you eat if you want your low-carb diet to help you lose weight and keep it off.
The study discovered that people who had a low-carb, unhealthy diet heavy in meat gained weight over time in comparison to those who ate a healthier plant-based diet.
The study’s senior author, Dr. Qi Sun, an associate professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, stated that “people have a better chance of keeping excess weight gain at bay when they consume diets that emphasize carbohydrates from whole grains, healthy nontropical vegetable oils, and plant proteins.”
The study examined four different low-carb diets: a healthy one that focused on eating less refined carbohydrates, more plant protein, and healthy fats like olive oil; an unhealthy meal plan that included unhealthy fats, more animal protein, and refined grains; and finally, a diet that focused on protein and fat sourced from vegetables.
Expert in preventive and lifestyle medicine, Dr. David Katz founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of professionals committed to evidence-based lifestyle medicine. “To my knowledge, examining the effects on lasting weight loss of different low-carb variants is novel,” Katz said. He did not participate in the study.
About 38% to 40% of daily calories were cut from carbs in all of the diets. However, compared to those who concentrated on larger intakes of fruit, whole grains, and non-starchy vegetables and decreased intakes of dairy, red and processed meat, sugar-sweetened beverages, sweets, and desserts, those who consumed an unhealthy carb diet heavy in animal protein and fat gained weight over time.
“People who used unhealthy low-carb diets as their main approach gained, on average, about 2.3 kg, or 5.1 lbs., over four years,” according to the first author Binkai Liu, a research assistant at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s nutrition department.
“Those who adopted healthy low-carb diets as a primary strategy lost, on average, roughly 2.2 kg, or 4.9 lbs., for a mean, net difference between the two of 10 lbs.,” she wrote in an email.
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The study looked at data from over 67,000 participants in three well-known longitudinal studies: the Nurses’ Health Study, which was carried out between 1986 and 2010, the Nurses’ Health Study II, which was carried out between 1991 and 2015, and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study, which was carried out between 1986 and 2018. The study was published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Network Open.
“These are, of course, observational studies, and not designed to establish cause-and-effect; rather, they reveal associations,” Katz explained. “However, when observed associations are potent, dose-responsive, hard to explain away and tethered to plausible mechanisms — cause-and-effect may at times be inferred.”
Every participant in the three trials was younger than 65, in good health, and free of any chronic illnesses. Every four years, participants self-reported their weight growth or decrease.
According to the study, dieters who followed low-carbohydrate plans that prioritized “high-quality macronutrients from healthy plant-based foods” experienced less weight gain than those who followed low-carb plans that “emphasized animal-sourced proteins and fats or refined carbohydrates were associated with more weight gain.” The study discovered that those who were younger, heavier, and less active had stronger connections.
“The bottom line was that over a span of four years, simply adopting a ‘low carb’ diet in general was NOT associated with lasting weight loss among those attempting to lose weight, WHEREAS adopting a plant-based and/or high-quality low-carb diet WAS associated with sustained weight loss,” Katz wrote in an email.
Although the study concentrated on low-carb eating, Sun, who is also the director of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Nutritional Biomarker Laboratory, stated that food quality is crucial to any diet.
“It is always wise to choose a diet (that) emphasizes fresh fruits and non-starchy vegetables, whole grains, nuts, legumes, olive oil and other vegetable oils, coffee, tea or just water, modest red wine if drinking, low sodium, and other healthy ingredients,” Sun stated.
