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The situation doesn't look good... Harvard University presented a nutritional study that left the experts speechless. Not so much because of the results, but because of the lack of data.
For two years, around 800 overweight people (half of which were obese) were monitored during their use of 4 different types of low calorie diets in which there was a variation of the composition of fats, carbohydrates and proteins.
For whomever is interested, the 4 diets subdivided the food components (fats, proteins and carbohydrates) in 20, 15 and 65%; 20, 25 and 55%; 40, 15 and 45%; and 40, 25 and 35%. Apart from the difficulty of managing this kind of composition, especially if the evaluation is made by means of questionnaires (unfortunately in the same way as physical activity performance was evaluated since this was reported by telephone), the real drama is that after two years of studying these different diets, Harvard Medical School couldn't find a better means of evaluation than a tape measure and a scale.
Someone might think of using an impedance scale which measures a person's body fat, even if not in a completely precise manner. But they didn't think of this because the measurements were made only in terms of weight, independent of body composition.
Modern dietetics is making incredible progress. However this seems to have been forgotten when, in the year 2009, we read that these people lost weight after 6 months, all of them regained it after 12 or more months and that all 4 of the diet compositions gave similar results without specifying which body component was reduced.
In order to understand the difference between the loss of body fat and muscle mass, take a look at the photos of the women followed by our Milan center in cooperation with the magazine Donna Moderna. Take Giulia (the dancer from “Amici”), for instance. She only lost 3 kilos, but in reality she lost as much as 5 kilos of fat and gained 2 kilos of muscle mass. So did the others who we followed or are following (like Ada). By modifying their metabolism, each one of them was able to lose a considerable amount of fat, which is the only real type of weight loss that can be contemplated.
We get the impression that the scope of this highly touted article published in the New England is to simply confirm the supposed validity of low calorie diets (Sacks FM et al, N Engl J Med. 2009 Feb 26;360(9):859-73).
Today medicine is emphasizing the need to improve metabolism and to abandon the low calorie diet as a means of losing weight. We're disconcerted by the fact that one of the most important medical centers in the world continues to measure a success solely in terms of a scale reading, evaluating weight loss in the same way whether a person took a diuretic, had a bout of diarrhea or fasted for two days, losing only muscle and water
On the other hand, the constant proof given by positive results encourages us to continue with our work, conscious of the fact that sooner or later even Science will have to consider the data and not just conjectures.
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