Are you trying to lose some unwanted extra weight and are struggling with eating less? Did you know that most people don’t fail at dieting just because they can’t eat less; rather, the failure is due to the body’s biological response to calorie restriction, including increased hunger and slowed metabolism, and the unsustainability of extreme dietary changes. Other significant factors can include mental aspects like deprivation thinking and all-or-nothing mindsets, the pervasive marketing of unhealthy foods, and the difficulty of making sustainable lifestyle changes.
Biological and Hormonal Factors
- Increased Hunger and Satiety Hormones: Calorie restriction triggers your body to release hormones like ghrelin (hunger) and suppress leptin (satiety), making you feel hungrier and less satisfied by food.
- Metabolic Slowdown: Your body interprets dieting as a threat to survival, leading to metabolic changes that slow it down to conserve energy.
- Weight Set Point: The brain has a weight “set point” or “anchor” that it actively works to maintain; it uses powerful physiological tools to resist weight loss and push your body back towards that set point.
Mental and Emotional Factors
- Deprivation Thinking: Labeling foods as “off-limits” can make the brain want them more, leading to cravings and a preoccupation with food.
- All-or-Nothing Mindset: Strict diets with no room for flexibility can lead to an “all-or-nothing” mentality where one perceived slip-up causes people to give up entirely.
- Stress and Cortisol: High stress levels release cortisol, a hormone that can increase appetite and fat storage, making weight management more challenging.
External Factors
- Food Environment: The constant availability and marketing of highly processed, unhealthy foods actively work against dietary efforts.
- Unrealistic Expectations: Drastic, unsustainable changes are often implemented, which are difficult to maintain long-term, leading to failure.
Sustainable Alternatives
- Focus on Healthy Habits: Instead of dieting, focus on adopting healthy, sustainable habits like regular physical activity and a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.
- Mindfulness and Intuitive Eating: Practicing mindfulness and intuitive eating can help you tune into your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues.
MPF vs UPD Using Guidelines on Weight & Cardiometabolic Health
Even with all that said above, let’s be honest, sometimes it does come down to how much you are eating and what you are eating. Touching on that, a study recently published in Nature Medicine has found that those who focus on eating minimally processed foods (such as homemade whole grain spaghetti and overnight oats) lost twice as much weight as those eating ultra-processed foods (such as ready-made meals and breakfast oat bars), even though both diets were “nutritionally balanced’ and they could freely eat as much as they wanted.
This randomized, crossover, real-world, long-term trial led by researchers at University College London (UCL) and UCLH, involving 55 adults, adds to the growing body of evidence indicating that food processing itself, not just the nutrients, plays a significant role in shaping body weight and health outcomes.
For this study, one group started with an 8-week minimally processed food diet (MPF), then after a four-week period in which participants went back to their regular diet, they switched to an ultra-processed food diet (UPF). During this time, the other group completed the same diets, but they did so in the reverse order.
The diets were provided, and they were nutritionally matched with the UK government’s official advice on how to eat a healthy and balanced diet called the Eatwell Guide. All of the participants had diets containing more calories than they needed delivered to their homes, and they were told that they could eat as little or as much as they wanted.
The researchers found that after 8 weeks, both groups had lost weight, which is believed to be due to the improved nutritional profile compared to what they were eating before the study. However, the participants experienced better results on the minimally processed diet compared to when they were eating the ultra-processed diet. This corresponded to the estimated daily calorie deficit from the MPF diet compared to the UPF diet.
The greater weight loss on the minimally processed diet was the result of reductions in fat mass and total body water, which was achieved without any changes in lean muscle or fat-free mass, which could indicate a healthier overall body composition. Additionally, this suggests that following recommended dietary guidelines and selecting minimally processed food choices can be more effective for losing weight.
“Previous research has linked ultra-processed foods with poor health outcomes. But not all ultra-processed foods are inherently unhealthy based on their nutritional profile. The main aim of this trial was to fill crucial gaps in our knowledge about the role of food processing in the context of existing dietary guidance, and how it affects health outcomes such as weight, blood pressure and body composition, as well as experiential factors like food cravings,” said Dr. Samuel Dicken, first author of the study from the UCL Centre for Obesity Research and UCL Department of Behavioural Science & Health.
“The primary outcome of the trial was to assess percentage changes in weight, and on both diets, we saw a significant reduction, but the effect was nearly double on the minimally processed diet. Though a 2% reduction may not seem very big, that is only over eight weeks, and without people trying to actively reduce their intake. If we scaled these results up over the course of a year, we’d expect to see a 13% weight reduction in men and a 9% reduction in women on the minimally processed diet, but only a 4% weight reduction in men and 5% in women after the ultra-processed diet. Over time, this would start to become a big difference.”
What About Cravings?
To gauge cravings, all of the participants completed questionnaires at enrollment, as well as at weeks 4 and 8 during the time they were on both of the diets. The analysis revealed that there were significant improvements in the number of cravings and the ability to resist the cravings when the participants were on the minimally processed diet, despite the weight loss that might have ordinarily been expected to create stronger cravings.
“The global food system at the moment drives diet-related poor health and obesity, particularly because of the wide availability of cheap, unhealthy food. This study highlights the importance of ultra-processing in driving health outcomes in addition to the role of nutrients like fat, salt, and sugar. It underlines the need to shift the policy focus away from individual responsibility and on to the environmental drivers of obesity, such as the influence of multinational food companies in shaping unhealthy food environments,” said Professor Chris van Tulleken, an author of the study from UCL Division of Infection & Immunity and UCLH.
“Stakeholders across disciplines and organisations must work together and focus on wider policy actions that improve our food environment, such as warning labels, marketing restrictions, progressive taxation and subsidies, to ensure that healthy diets are affordable, available and desirable for all.”
Basically, the minimally processed diet helped people lose twice as much weight, without as many cravings and without eating less than those on the ultra-processed diet did.
More weight loss, less craving: minimally processed meals outperform ultra-processed ones, even with the same calories.
Was There Improvement Beyond Weight Loss?
In addition to tracking weight loss and cravings, this study also measured secondary health markers like heart rate and blood pressure, along with blood markers like inflammation, cholesterol, glucose, and liver function. According to the researchers, there were no significant changes in negative or improved from baseline levels on the ultra-processed diet. Overall, there were no significant differences in the markers between the two diets, leading the team to caution that longer studies are needed to investigate the measures properly in relation to the other changes.
“Despite being widely promoted, less than 1% of the UK population follows all of the recommendations in the Eatwell Guide, and most people stick to fewer than half,” said Professor Rachel Batterham, senior author of the study from the UCL Centre for Obesity Research. “The normal diets of the trial participants tended to be outside national nutritional guidelines and included an above-average proportion of UPF, which may help to explain why switching to a trial diet consisting entirely of UPF, but that was nutritionally balanced, resulted in neutral or slightly favourable changes to some secondary health markers.”
“The best advice to people would be to stick as closely to nutritional guidelines as they can by moderating overall energy intake, limiting intake of salt, sugar, and saturated fat, and prioritizing high-fiber foods such as fruits, vegetables, pulses, and nuts. Choosing less processed options such as whole foods and cooking from scratch, rather than ultra-processed, packaged foods or ready meals, is likely to offer additional benefits in terms of body weight, body composition, and overall health.”
This article was written by TJ Webber at the WHN News Desk.
As with anything you read on the internet, this article should not be construed as medical advice; please talk to your doctor or primary care provider before changing your wellness routine. WHN neither agrees nor disagrees with any of the materials posted. This article is not intended to provide a medical diagnosis, recommendation, treatment, or endorsement. Additionally, it is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
