Most people who want to lose weight decide to diet since it is one of the easiest methods. Exercise will take time and it requires effort, but with a diet all you have to do is eat healthier food and results should soon follow. However, as it turns out, intense dieting won’t help you to lose weight faster. A new study revealed that taking breaks will help the entire process.
New research discovered that intermittent diets have better results.
A new study lead by Nuala Byrne, Head of the University of Tasmania’s School of Health Sciences revealed that taking two weeks break during a diet will help you lose weight faster. “While further investigations are needed around this intermittent dieting approach, findings from this study provide preliminary support for the model as a superior alternative to continuous dieting for weight loss,” says Prof Byrne. “When we reduce our energy intake during dieting, resting metabolism decreases to a greater extent than expected; a phenomenon termed ‘adaptive thermogenesis,” it was explained.
The research studied two groups that were following a 16-diet. The group that took breaks from the diet lost more weight than the group that had a continuous diet. They also gained less weight after the end of the diet. “It seems that the ‘breaks’ from dieting we have used in this study may be critical to the success of this approach.”
Diet breaks are needed because of our ancestral heritage
The researchers explained that these results can be explained if we take a look at our past. ”This ‘famine reaction’, a survival mechanism which helped humans to survive as a species when food supply was inconsistent in millennia past, is now contributing to our growing waistlines when the food supply is readily available.”
