Best way to shed extra kilos

08 April 2015 - 02:33 By Katharine Child

Want to lose weight but don't know which diet will give you the best results? A team of medical professors may just have the answer.Comparing studies on popular American diets to see which ones helped people keep weight off a year later, the academics found that the low-carbohydrate diets of Weight Watchers and Atkins were most likely to work.Their study results were published in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine yesterday.The diet most likely to see people lose modest amounts of weight and be able to keep it off more than a year later was Weight Watchers and an American meal replacement diet called Jenny Craig.The Jenny Craig diet, which is not available in South Africa, provides low-calorie, "tasty" meals.Weight Watchers SA CEO Peter Lombard said "the diet teaches people portion control and how to make good healthy choices when shopping and people how to read and understand product labels".Researchers also compared self-directed diets that had internet support.In that section, the Atkins diet came out tops."Programmes based on the Atkins diet - high in fat, low in carbohydrates - also appears promising," the authors write.The study found extreme diets that restricted calorie intake led to weight loss that did not last six months and could lead to complications such as gallstones...

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