my personal edition > obesity > news


  E-Mail this DGDispatch to a colleague

DGDispatch

Weight Watchers Diet Produces Same Results With or Without Emphasis on Low-Glycaemic Index

By Paula Moyer

ATHENS, GREECE -- June 6, 2005 -- People who follow a conventional Weight Watchers diet appear to have as much weight loss and improvement of metabolic parameters regardless of whether or not they follow modifications that emphasise foods with low glycemic indeces.

The investigators presented this finding here on June 3^rd at the 14^th European Congress on Obesity.

"We found that weight loss was the same in both groups," said principal investigator France Bellisle, PhD, Researcher in Clinical Nutrition, Hôtel-Dieu Hospital, Paris, France. "Participants benefited equally from both diets on objective measures."

Dr. Bellisle and colleagues conducted the study because other researchers had suggested that low glycemic diets could benefit weight loss by either enhancing satiety or increased fat oxidation or other endocrine mechanisms.

Dr. Bellisle's research team compared the Weight Watchers POINTS Weight-Loss System with or without modification to encourage the selection of low-glycaemic index, low-carbohydrate foods.

The POINTS system is a low-calorie diet that emphasizes a balance of food choices. The various categories of food types are given points, so that individuals can consume some dessert-type foods by exchanging the points consumed with points from foods of equivalent caloric value.

Subjects who were on a POINTS diet that emphasised foods with low glycaemic indeces restricted consumption of sweets and high-carbohydrate foods such as potatoes and grains.

The investigators recruited 65 women to followed the POINTS program for 12 weeks -- 30 followed the conventional diet and 35 followed the low glycaemic-index modified diet. The investigators obtained participants' anthropometric and biochemical measures at baseline and after 12 weeks.

During the study period, both groups lost an average of 5% of their initial body weight, which is a significant loss of body weight, Dr. Bellisle said. The average weight loss in the two groups were similar. The two groups also had similar reductions in insulinaemia, total cholesterol, and blood pressure, as well as decreases in circumference at the waist, hip and thigh.

Dr. Bellisle and her co-investigators concluded that the conventional diet was associated with benefits in weight loss, loss in circumference at key anatomical sites, and improvement in several metabolic measures. They saw no added objective benefit to restricting foods to those with low glycaemic indeces.

However, those who followed the low-glycemic diet had better satiety and less hunger and craving, the key problems that are the downfall of many dieters, Dr. Bellisle said.

In another analysis of the data, the investigators assessed patients' hunger and desire to eat on visual analogue scales (VAS) with higher ratings indicating greater hunger and desire to eat. The participants recorded these data once a week at several points in the day -- before and after each meal or snack, and at various intervals between eating episodes.

Results of the VAS analysis showed that subjects in the low glycaemic index group had consistently lower VAS ratings than those in the conventional group, particularly in the afternoon. Because the evening meal in France is served relatively late (at 8:00 p.m. or later), less hunger in the afternoon may be a key benefit to persistence with a diet that emphasises foods with low glycemic indeces, Dr. Bellisle said.

Both studies were supported by grants from Weight Watchers International, Inc.


[Presentation titles: Weight and Biological Changes After 12 Weeks on Moderately Restricted Diets With or Without Special Attention to the Glycemic Index of Foods. Poster P551. Lower Hunger and Desire to Eat During 12 Weeks on A Modified Weight Watchers Diet With Special Emphasis on Low-Glycemic Index Foods. Poster P537]

E-Mail this DGDispatch to a colleague

To print, use this version