A rapid weight-loss diet may help shed fat in a flash

April 13, 2000
Web posted at: 11:18 AM EDT (1518 GMT)

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(WebMD) -- Several years ago, Oprah Winfrey walked onto her talk show pulling a wagon full of fat to graphically demonstrate what she had lost on a highly touted liquid diet. Her dramatic results gave hope to dieters nationwide that they, too, could lose weight fast. But Oprah's triumph didn't last. Within a year or so, the television superstar had regained most of what she'd lost.

Still, a quick and painless path to a size 6 remains the dieter's dream. And at least one scientist recently gave hope to millions of dieters looking for a quick fix. The plan doesn't have a catchy name -- yet. Originator James Anderson, M.D., just calls it the VLCD, for very-low-calorie diet.

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The formula? Five weight-loss shakes a day. Dieters can also choose to take in their daily allotment of 900 calories by drinking three shakes and substituting two low-calorie meals for the others. When 112 people tried the diet as part of Anderson's research, they lost an average of 65 pounds over five months.

What's really impressive, however, is that most people kept off 15 of those pounds -- 23 percent of the initial loss -- for more than five years, according to results published in the December 1999 issue of the Journal of the American College of Nutrition. Most people who lose weight can only maintain 5 to 15 percent of their losses, says George Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School.

"Our study shows that people do better if they bite the bullet and get down to a weight they desire and then try to maintain it," says Anderson, the study's lead author and a professor of medicine and clinical nutrition at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. "It's a myth that if you lose weight slowly you do better in the long run."

Don't go running for the Slim Fast yet. On top of carefully controlling their calories, the researchers also coached the dieters on how to change their weight-gaining habits and ways. Physicians and dietitians in the study stressed the importance of eating fruits and vegetables. Dieters learned how to count calories, assess the nutritional value of various foods and understand the importance of exercise. Those parts of the program were essential to his and any weight-loss regimen, says Anderson. "Weight loss isn't just about restricting calories," he says.

Other weight-loss experts agree. "The diet itself was an important element of Anderson's study, but if the subjects hadn't also made substantial behavioral changes, the outcome would (have been) very different," says psychologist Tom Wadden, Ph.D., director of the weight loss and eating disorders program at the University of Pennsylvania.

Research has shown that such fast-track diets are only as good as long as they last, says John Foreyt, Ph.D., director of the Behavioral Medicine Research Center at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "Rapid weight loss typically leads to rapid weight gain," he says. "Very-low-calorie diets are diets we can't live with and can't live on. The bulk of research shows that they're short-term fixes, and when you go off the diet, you return to old habits."

Still interested in giving quick weight loss a try? Anderson offers these tips, which he thinks made the big difference for his dieters.

Incorporate meal replacement products into your daily or weekly menu. Meal replacements -- whether they're packaged foods such as Lean Cuisine, or shakes such as Slim Fast -- are very helpful for maintaining long-term weight loss. "Using just two meal replacements a week would be enough to keep off ten pounds in a year," says Anderson. "That's a lot of weight for a minimal change in eating patterns."

© 2000 Healtheon/WebMD. All rights reserved.

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