The apparent ineffectiveness of "conventional diets" for weight loss was somewhat lost in the excitement of the recent intermittent LC study. Well, maybe not lost entirely ... there's always lots of "see, counting calories is useless" to go around. But it struck me, yet again, that part of the problem with such traditional weight loss diets is that they are simply too high in calories to produce significant losses.
Harvie's group has done a number of studies (I hope to discuss some when I get time and if I can get the full text of some) in pre-to-post menopausal age women with a focus on breast cancer risk. Her group's "standard diet" seems to be a 1500 cal/day diet. In the study presented at the San Antonio conference, the control group followed a 1500 cal/day Mediterranean style diet, and lost a piddly 4 pounds over 4 months. See? They don't work!! Perhaps the reason why they don't work, however, is because that is simply not a weight loss level of calories for most women. Now, this is a tough pill for many of us to swallow, but swallow it we must or we'll tear our hair out wondering over our metabolic derangements and hormonal dysfunction (or is that metabolic dysfunction and hormonal derangements ... or does it matter? ...).
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