A to Z diet study

cstehansen

This is from JAMA from 2007. Next time someone tells you eating all that fat will clog your arteries, use this study. It followed people for a year following one of 3 diets - Atkins, Zone, LEARN and Ornish. Those are listed from lowest carb to highest carb with Ornish being the preferred "plant based" diet everyone in academia wanting to push us onto.

Short answer is not only did those on Atkins lose almost as much weight as the 2nd and 3rd place finishers COMBINED (0.1 kg short), HDL improved the most as did trigs while total and LDL was statistically insignificant.

http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/205916

Of course, glucose in the Atkins group also dropped more than any other group and insulin was tied for the lowest drop.

Unfortunately, when you look at the data, you can see the Atkins group seemed to do reasonably well at first with 17.7% of calories coming from carbs, but based on the actual eating, the carbs increased to almost 35% of calories in that group by the end, so some of the gains went backwards.

In my mind, the Atkins diet was not actually tested, but rather a lower than standard carb diet was tested. Even that lower carb diet clearly beat the others. The good part of this is if you have friends and family that see your success but say they could never do keto or do without XX food, this is evidence that even if they only go lower carb, there is benefit.

canadjineh

As RalfLott says: <refresh>

Sunny_Bunny_

A new NuSi study design has been published.
No results yet but it sounds like it will be interesting.
We will have to keep it on the radar.

A new NuSI study is out, this time by Dr Gardner. He's the author of the A to Z study.


Abstract:

Numerous studies have attempted to identify successful dietary strategies for weight loss, and many have focused on Low-Fat vs. Low-Carbohydrate comparisons. Despite relatively small between-group differences in weight loss found in most previous studies, researchers have consistently observed relatively large between-subject differences in weight loss within any given diet group (e.g., ~25kg weight loss to ~5kg weight gain). The primary objective of this study was to identify predisposing individual factors at baseline that help explain differential weight loss achieved by individuals assigned to the same diet, particularly a pre-determined multi-locus genotype pattern and insulin resistance status. Secondary objectives included discovery strategies for further identifying potential genetic risk scores. Exploratory objectives included investigation of an extensive set of physiological, psychosocial, dietary, and behavioral variables as moderating and/or mediating variables and/or secondary outcomes. The target population was generally healthy, free-living adults with BMI 28-40kg/m2 (n=600). The intervention consisted of a 12-month protocol of 22 one-hour evening instructional sessions led by registered dietitians, with ~15-20 participants/class. Key objectives of dietary instruction included focusing on maximizing the dietary quality of both Low-Fat and Low-Carbohydrate diets (i.e., Healthy Low-Fat vs. Healthy Low-Carbohydrate), and maximally differentiating the two diets from one another. Rather than seeking to determine if one dietary approach was better than the other for the general population, this study sought to examine whether greater overall weight loss success could be achieved by matching different people to different diets. Here we present the design and methods of the study.


https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/28027950/

cstehansen

Thanks for the info on the updated study @Sunny_Bunny_ ! I will keep my eyes open for results. Given this is a 12 month study that will then need to be written and reviewed, I expect it won't be available until 2019, though.