If you’ve ever tinkered with your diet to try and lose weight, you’ve likely zeroed-in on the snacks and desserts. They typically offer little nutritional value, are generally high in calories and carbohydrates, and they’re often pretty moreish.
When you’re trying to bring your calorie intake down, cutting out the treats can seem like a no-brainer.
However, anyone who’s been on the kind of diet that excludes occasional treats will know that it’s hard to maintain. Willpower can fluctuate depending on all manner of external factors, with even the most diligent person facing regular battles to stick to the plan.
With that in mind, some modern dietary advice seeks to alter this perception of treats being a no-go when you’re on a weight loss journey, with the idea being that moderation may be more effective in the long-run than complete exclusion.
New research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, conducted over 24 months, found that participants who included small portions of their preferred treats within their meal plans lost more weight and had fewer cravings than those who tried to eliminate treats from their diets.
Published in the Physiology and Behavior journal, the study followed participants as they followed a year of active weight loss followed by another year of maintaining the weight they had achieved.
The results saw that moderate and well-managed treat consumption led to better outcomes.
“If you are eating and snacking randomly, it’s very hard to control,” said Professor Manabu T. Nakamura, one of the study’s co-authors.
“Some dietary programs exclude certain foods. Our plan used an ‘inclusion strategy,’ in which people incorporated small portions of craved foods within a well-balanced meal.”
In effect, it’s about managing cravings to prevent them from de-railing a weight loss plan.
Across the two years, 30 obese adults went through a weight loss programme following by a year of maintenance. Of those 30, 24 completed the first year and lost an average of 7.9% of their starting bodyweight.
For those that finished the two-year plan, they lost an average of 6.7% from the starting weight.
Various patterns emerged through the study:
- Those who lost more than 5% of their starting weight had significant and consistent reductions in how frequently and intensely they experienced food cravings;
- Participants who included some of their most-craved foods in their diet plans lost significantly more weight than those that didn’t;
- A key predictor as to whether the weight loss would be successful after the two years was in the early reductions in carbohydrate cravings.
In essence, it seems that moderating and reducing cravings for foods is more important than going without them. The implication is that failing to deal with the cravings in a managed way makes them more likely to overpower you over the long-term, and so treating yourself in moderation is likely to have a more consistent effect on weight loss efforts.
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Rachael Davis