Dieting really CAN harm your health:

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Dieting really CAN harm your health: Slimmers at higher risk of heart disease and cancer



By Pat Hagan
The Daily Mail Excerpt:
Last updated at 10:00 PM on 16th April 2010
Going on a diet could increase your risk of developing potentially deadly conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer, a study has revealed.
It found that those who controlled their calorie intake produced higher levels of the harmful stress hormone cortisol.
And it claimed that exposure to the hormone actually made some dieters put on weight, which could explain why so many Britons fail to shed fat despite slashing their food intake.
The researchers also warned that far from making people feel better about themselves, dieting could actually damage their mental health.
Many suffered increased psychological stress when they were constantly forced to count calories and monitor what they ate.
Doctors should think twice before putting their patients on strict diets because of the possible long-term damage to their health, they said.
'Regardless of their success or failure (in losing weight), if future studies show that dieting increases stress and cortisol, doctors may need to rethink recommending it to their patients to improve health,' the rese
'Chronic stress, in addition to promoting weight gain, has been linked with coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and cancer. Dieting might potentially add to this stress burden and its consequences would best not be ignored.'
The study, by California University in San Francisco and Minnesota University, looked at 121 women who were put on a standard three-week diet of 1,200 calories a day - around half a woman's recommended daily amount of 2,000 calories.

END EXCERPT
The old joke:"Women and minorities, hardest hit..." is 50% on the money here. Most diet products and programs are aimed at women, the women are doomed.
 
Interesting!

Mind you it is in the Daily Mail which makes me automatically doubtful. Definitely a time to follow up the actual research rather than just take the papers word for it {I would be careful about trusting the date printed on the header in the Daily Mail :lol:}.
 
"Dieting...really sucks."

And in other news....

President Obama recently said something that the Republicans didn't like, the Israelis and Palestinians do not completely get along, Angelina Jolie got some kind of press for doing something and....it is going to snow today in New Hampshire. :lol:
 
{Chuckles} I am sensing the input of some witty real-world experience into the discourse :D.
 
I'd have issues with this survey.

1) 1200 calories per day is ridiculously low. Any diet/fitness magazine will tell you to cut your standard calorie intake (2000 for 'average' women, 2500 for 'average' men) by a max of 300-400 calories a day. Anything more risks your body going into starvation mode and hanging onto the fat. It's one of the main reasons that crash diets don't work. 1200 calories a day is a crash diet by anyone's standards.

2) It's contextual. Being morbidly obese is pretty bad for your cardiovascular health too. Saying that staying so is more desirable than dieting is lunacy. On the other hand, a person of healthy weight on a diet is of course going to have health consequences.

3) A balanced, tailored diet =/= chronic stress.
 
It is probably true that dieting like that is a stressful thing that is not good for the body. And it is pointless anyway. Pick a lifestyle that you can live with long term, and follow that. You'll gradually lose weight as a consequence of the lifestyle change, not as a consequence of counting every last calorie.

I switched my habits a month or 2 ago and I am slowly losing weight. I think I lost 8 pounds in 2 months. I am no longer drinking soda, eating candy or snacks, etc, and eat a bit less fat. But I am not counting calories, and if I am hungry I'll eat. And last weekend, I had a bowl of vanilla ice cream with fresh whipped cream and chocolate sauce on top. Because I felt like doing that. And it won't matter in the long run anyway. 1 meal does not make you gain weight.

Choosing a healthy lifestyle does not have to be mutually exclusive with enjoying life. If you forgo all pleasure and count every last calorie just to lose weight quickly, you will be grumpy, you will feel stressed, you will annoy the people who are close to you, and as soon as you quit the crash diet lifestyle and switch to a sustainable one, the pounds will start piling up quickly and you will be off worse than when you started.
 
I'd have issues with this survey.

1) 1200 calories per day is ridiculously low. Any diet/fitness magazine will tell you to cut your standard calorie intake (2000 for 'average' women, 2500 for 'average' men) by a max of 300-400 calories a day. Anything more risks your body going into starvation mode and hanging onto the fat. It's one of the main reasons that crash diets don't work. 1200 calories a day is a crash diet by anyone's standards.

2) It's contextual. Being morbidly obese is pretty bad for your cardiovascular health too. Saying that staying so is more desirable than dieting is lunacy. On the other hand, a person of healthy weight on a diet is of course going to have health consequences.

3) A balanced, tailored diet =/= chronic stress.
300 to 400 calories would amount to 1 or 2 desserts a day.
 
300 to 400 calories would amount to 1 or 2 desserts a day.

Yup. More like one.

A slight, sustained calorie deficit is the trick to dieting. In one week you'll have cut 2100 calories, over 2/3 of a pound of fat (though in practice, not really.) A modest decrease is easier to maintain without yo-yo dieting and could even be achieved by switching from soda to sugarfree soda. If you start to get more active, fantastic. More calories on the burner.

Of course, the 300-400 deficit should be to your basal metabolic rate, not your normal diet. Maybe I didn't make that clear. If you're eating 3000 calories a day and not moving and cut it back to 2700 calories a day, you're still going to get fat. It'll just take longer. On the other hand, if you're eating 2100 calories rather than the (rough) BMR advised 2500, you're going to lose. Nice and simple.
 
Healthy eating and exercise = weight loss.

Or even just eating less and exercise. Simple formula, but can be hard for many to implement - it was for me. I ate to much, and poorly, and had a sedentary job behind a computer for many years, and of course gained a lot of weight. In the last 2.5 months I've lost 25 lbs by cutting out Burger King lunches, but still eating at Subway (so still not as good as I could be) and getting back into Hapkido class 3 times a week.

60 lbs to go!
 
300 to 400 calories would amount to 1 or 2 desserts a day.

Or one fancy drink from Starbucks, how many people do you know stop off two or three times a day to get their 'grande, mocha, vanilla, mega overpriced' coffee?
 
Or even just eating less and exercise. Simple formula, but can be hard for many to implement - it was for me. I ate to much, and poorly, and had a sedentary job behind a computer for many years, and of course gained a lot of weight. In the last 2.5 months I've lost 25 lbs by cutting out Burger King lunches, but still eating at Subway (so still not as good as I could be) and getting back into Hapkido class 3 times a week.

60 lbs to go!

Very nice man, way to go :) .

Someone I know recently got blood tests back, and there were a few worryingly high levels in them: mainly triglycerides, cholesterol and LDLs. The recommended course of action was to start avoiding carby things like breads as much as possible (because they directly contribute to triglyceride levels), start taking omega-3 fish oils, and being more active. We're on a high-protein, low carb diet together and lifting weights. Probably overdoing the cardio too. Six pack for summer :D

But the health benefits in his case are hopefully going to be amazing. Heart disease is such a killer, and those types of steps can really help to cripple it. So keep doing what you're doing, it's most likely having a hell of a lot of benefits you're not even seeing.
 
The article seems to miss the idea that we are always on a diet, everything we eat is our diet. So damning diets as unhealthy is weird, does it mean what people eat now is unhealthy, or something else that they may eat at some point in the future is unhealthy?
 
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