Here are 2 diet tips from a recent study at Tel Aviv University:
- If you avoid eating desserts and other sweets completely, you’ll become psychologically addicted to these foods in the long run… so indulge to lose weight… and…
- Eating dessert as part of a high-calorie breakfast can curb cravings, improve your body and brain function, and help you to lose more weight and keep it off longer.
Yikes, can the experts be coming around to our way of thinking? We first published the I Love to Cheat lifestyle diet book in 2006. Now the experts, backed by scientific study, are finally catching up in 2012. Heck, even Dr. Oz recommends a cheat day.
But back to the study because these results were surprising even to us… you’ll be amazed by how much more weight the cheaters lost!…
The researchers at Tel Aviv University found that including dessert as part of a 600-calorie breakfast (balanced with other carbohydrates and proteins) helped dieters to lose an average of almost 40 pounds more than those on a low-carb diet… AND… the dessert-eaters kept the weight off longer.
The study lasted about 8 months and included almost 200 obese adults who didn’t have diabetes. The men ate 1600 calories per day; the women ate 1400 calories per day. These men and women were randomly placed in 2 groups:
- The first group (“The Low-Carbs”) ate a 300-calorie, low-carb breakfast…
- The second group (“The Cheaters”) ate a 600-calorie breakfast which was loaded with protein and carbohydrates and included a dessert such as chocolate.
Now remember, each group ate the same amount of calories per day: 1600 for men and 1400 for women. The only difference was the types of foods they ate and how many calories they ate at breakfast. The scientists wanted to determine whether the types of foods and the amount of calories eaten in the morning would affect weight loss… or if weight loss was determined only by the overall daily calorie count.
At the midway point (about 4 months into the study), both The Low-Carbs and The Cheaters had lost an average of 33 pounds per person. But the last 4 months of the study is where it gets interesting.
In months 5 through 8, The Low-Carbs regained an average of 22 pounds per person while The Cheaters went on to lose an average of 15 pounds more per person.
Over the entire 8 months of the study, that means The Low-Carbs lost about 11 pounds per person while The Cheaters lost a whopping 48 pounds per person on average.
Here’s why the researchers believe this happened:
- They believe it’s important to indulge in sweets in the morning because your body’s metabolism is most active then, you get the energy you need for your daily activities and your brain function, and you can work off the extra breakfast calories during the day…
- Low-carb and other highly restrictive diets work well at first, but then cause symptoms that mimic withdrawal. So you go back to the foods you crave, abandon the low-carb diet, and regain a good deal of the weight you lost…
- The Low-Carbs in this study weren’t satisfied by their food choices and often felt as though they weren’t full. They had more intense cravings for carbs and sugars which caused them to cheat on their diets in the wrong way and eventually regain much of their lost weight…
- The Cheaters had few or no cravings for desserts later in the day after eating dessert for breakfast…
- And the big takeaway was just common sense… a realistic diet works better than a restrictive one… and deprivation doesn’t work nearly as well as indulgence to curb your cravings for long-term weight loss.
So these are the latest diet tips, backed by scientific study, for losing weight and keeping it off in the long run.
