How would you feel about starting a weight loss programme in which you are not even allowed to lose weight for the first 8 weeks? It sounds like the best diet ever, if a little bit backwards, but a study has found that women who spend 8 weeks mastering weight control before beginning weight loss lose the same amount of weight in a set time as women who begin losing weight immediately, and regained less weight later on.
Michaela Kiernan, PhD, senior research scientist at the Stanford Prevention Research Centre was the lead author of the study, and referred to the 8 weeks as a ‘practice run’. She said it worked because ‘Women could try out different stability skills and work out the kinks without the pressure of worrying about how much weight they had lost’.
Kiernan went on to say that this study may offer a way to stop the cycle of yo-yo dieting. She noted ‘women who practiced stability first were more successful in maintaining that loss after a year’ as they only regained an average of 3 pounds, as opposed to immediate dieters who regained an average of 7 pounds.
So what did this weight maintenance wellness training involve? Participants were advised to find tasty low-fat and low-calorie alternatives to less healthy food to avoid feelings of deprivation and to occasionally eat small amounts of their favourite unhealthy foods. They also weighed themselves daily to identify how their body weight naturally fluctuates, and strategically lost a few pounds before an event where they knew their weight would be disrupted, and ate more when their weight fluctuated down towards the 5 pound mark.
Kiernan said the team developed this approach because of a need to focus on overall wellbeing, as well as weight loss: ‘we wanted something that would make the day-to-day experience positive while not requiring overwhelming amounts of effort.’ She added that the 3 pounds that the weight maintenance group gained falls squarely within the personalized range that the women were taught to use.
However, Kiernan noted that no participants had reported binge-eating behaviours, and more research needs to be done to determine whether the maintenance-first skills are feasible for vulnerable subgroups of people.
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