CHICAGO – The low-carb, high-fat Atkins diet gets high marks in one of the biggest, longest head-to-head studies of popular weight-loss plans, beating the Zone, the Ornish diet and even U.S. guidelines.
Even so, critics say the results show how hard it is to lose weight and keep it off.
Overweight women on the Atkins plan lost more weight over a year than those on the low-carb Zone diet. And they had slightly better blood pressure and cholesterol readings than those on the Zone; the very low-fat, high-carb Ornish diet, and a low-fat, high-carb diet similar to U.S. government guidelines.
Stanford University researcher Christopher Gardner, the lead author, said the study shows that Atkins may be more healthful than critics contend.
Atkins followers lost about 10 pounds on average at 12 months, versus 3.5 pounds for the Zone dieters.
Women on the Ornish diet lost almost 5 pounds on average and those on the national guidelines plan lost almost 6 pounds. Scientifically, those 12-month results weren’t different enough from the Atkins weight loss to rule out the possibility the differences occurred by chance.
The dieters lost the most weight early on, including an average of 13 pounds for the Atkins group at six months – nearly double the closest competitor, the national guidelines diet. After that, most began regaining weight.
“There’s not a ton of weight loss here,” Gardner acknowledged. Atkins “isn’t the solution for the obesity problem,” he said.
The study appears in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
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