Dieting - Cut Calories and Forget the Hype

If you're trying to lose weight, it can be hard to pick the "right" diet plan. There's the low-carb route, which means breaking up with bread for good, the low-fat lifestyle or diets like the Zone, which require you to balance your carbs, fat and protein with ninja precision.

So how about a little good news? A major weight loss study recently found that what you eat doesn't matter when it comes to weight loss, all that matters is that you don't eat too much.

More than 800 test subjects were put on of four different diet plans: two low-fat diets and two high-fat diets with calories from carbs ranging from 35 percent to 65 percent and calories from protein ranging from 15 percent to 25 percent. The diets were meant to mimic low-carb, low-cal or Mediterranean style diets. Everyone had access to counseling and an online food diary, and everyone had 750 calories cut from their normal calorie quota, though no one went under 1,200 calories a day.

The findings were revealing. No matter which plan they used, dieters lost an average of 13 pounds in six months, and they kept an average of nine of those pounds off for two years. Don't think that sounds like much? That's the point. What didn't matter to individuals who did manage to lose significant amounts of weight was what plan they used.

"The effect of any particular diet group is minuscule, but the effect of individual behavior is humongous,'' study author Dr. Frank M. Sacks tells "The New York Times." He says, "We had some people losing 50 pounds, and some people gaining 5 pounds. That's what we don't have a clue about. I think in the future, researchers should focus less on the actual diet but on finding what is really the biggest governor of success in these individuals.''

What that means for you, dear dieter, is that the world of dieting is now wide open. Love low-carb? Go for it. Can't live without bread? That's OK! There's even room in your life for a treat now and then, if you can keep portions under control. As long as you're cutting calories, you should be able to lose weight. I wonder if this is why Weight Watchers is consistently recommended as the most "doable" plan, because its basic formula isn't complicated: Eat less.

"It really does cut through the hype,'' says Dr. Sacks. "It gives people lots of flexibility to pick a diet that they can stick with."

It also means, though, that the responsibility for the success of weight loss doesn't lie on the diet. It belongs to the dieter. Like Dr. Sacks said, individual behavior played a more important role in weight loss than did the diet plan itself. What does that mean, exactly? That, my friends, remains up for debate. But for now, feel comfortable in the fact that the diet plan that works for you will work for you, as long as you can stick with it.