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Home Courses Healthy ageing in 6 steps – Let your environment do the work Course materials Readings 3.1 Why diets don’t work: reading & references

3.1 Why diets don’t work: reading & references

Course subject(s) Module 3. From conscious to unconscious health promotion

Recent data of ten thousands of adults from the UK with obesity (BMI>30) that were followed over time show how difficult it is to lose the extra kilos. After ten years, only 1 % of the obese individuals had managed to reach a normal body weight. Diets try to dictate do’s and don’t but these don’t have the desired effect on the long term. Our evolutionary history helps us understand why. Our body was never adapted to lose weight, all mechanisms are devoted to counteract weight loss and store energy. 

  • Fildes A, Charlton J, Rudisill C, Littlejohns P, Prevost AT, Gulliford MC.Probability of an Obese Person Attaining Normal Body. Weight: Cohort Study Using Electronic Health Records. Am J Public Health. 2015;105: e54–e59.

Those interested in how sugar-rich our foodproducts have become and thereby contribute to the epidemic of obesity should look at the very illustrative website Sugarstacks where sugarcubes are stacked next to the products that contains them.

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