Feb. 23 � Trying to lose weight? Some surprising new research suggests adding certain foods to your diet, may help you take off the pounds and inches. Dr. Dean Edell explains.
The latest numbers are stunning. Sixty-five percent of Americans are officially overweight, so it is no wonder we're scrambling to find ways to help people lose weight.
In recent years, some have claimed mono diets like the cabbage soup diet, the popcorn diet or the beer diet would work, but there's no proof they do.
Several years back, British doctors found one mono diet in particular was very effective in the short term for losing weight. It was based on milk and milk products. Well now it looks like the dairy diet is making a comeback.
The original study was described as a milk diet, but included most dairy products. The findings were impressive.
In the study, one group ate a basic low-calorie 800-cal diet. The second group ate an 800 caloried diet consisting of milk products. A third group ate 800 calories of milk, plus an unlimited amount of a different food each day.
One day, the milk plus group ate lots of a favorite fruit, the next unlimited amounts of lean meat or whatever they wanted, averaging 1333 calories a day. When it came to the weigh-in the results were surprising.
After four months, the low-calorie dieters lost only four pounds. Those eating 800 calories of milk products lost more than 21 pounds. That's impressive, but of greater interest, those on the milk plus who average 500 calories more a day than the low cal people lost 16 pounds. It seems as though the milk plus diet triggered nearly as much weight loss, but was much less restrictive.
New Tennessee research supports the surprising benefits of dairy. Dieters who ate low-fat yogurt three times a day lost 22 percent more weight, two-thirds more body fat and 80 percent more abdominal fat than dieters who ate the same number of calories but no dairy.
Alanna Nimau Vigil, M.S., R.D., CPMC registered dietician: "We are seeing indications of weight loss and people losing inches from the abdominal area as a result of using high calcium, low fat dairy products in their diet."
Nutritionists are beginning to suspect a unique weight-loss mechanism in dairy products.
Michael Zemil, Ph.D., study author: "It helped them to lose weight, it helped them to lose fat, it helped them to lose fat around their middle."
Vigil: "It seems that there is some type of bioactive compound in these dairy products that probably work together with the calcium to give people these weight loss benefits."
Obviously, we have more to learn, but low-fat dairy is good for your bones and blood pressure. So if it helps you lose weight too, that's a very good thing.