One Simple Rule--Calories In, Calories Out

I am asked all the time whether certain eating patterns will result in weight loss. Should one skip breakfast? Eat breakfast? Eat every three hours? What about alcohol: Will it really stop one from losing weight? These are all theories that are reported in the popular press, and it seems that most people take them to be true.

The truth is that there is no good, sound research to support any of those theories. Fortunately, a team at Bowling Green State University in Ohio recently conducted a study to find out if skipping meals or drinking alcohol had any effect on weight loss (Appetite 51 (2008) 538-545).

Forty-four overweight or obese men and women volunteered to participate in a 14-week weight loss study. All of the volunteers received a weight-loss program manual, an electronic device to track how many calories they burned in a day, and instructions on electronically tracking and reporting their daily food intake and exercise. Half of the participants received additional face-to-face counseling and weekly telephone follow-up sessions, but all of them were instructed to work toward the goal of burning at least 500 calories more than they consumed each day.

At the end of the 14-week program, the researchers were able to analyze each subject’s daily meals and snacks and compare them to how much the subject exercised that day. Further, they could compare those days in which a volunteer skipped meals with days in which they did not, and they could also see whether alcohol intake affected caloric intake or exercise.

Overall, skipping meals actually meant eating fewer calories. However, on those days that volunteers skipped meals, they also exercised less. And the weekly weigh-ins showed that skipping meals had no effect on how much weight the subject lost.

Similarly, those subjects who drank alcohol at all tended to exercise more on those days they consumed than on days that they did not. Again, drinking alcohol seemed to have no effect on the weekly weigh-ins and overall weight loss.

The trouble, of course, is that since the volunteers had been instructed to consume 500 calories per day less than they burned, it’s quite possible that they compensated for skipping meals or drinking alcohol by varying their amount of exercise.

One of the conclusions of this study is that it’s unlikely particular patterns of eating will have much effect on weight loss. But the really important conclusion is the continued importance of the very simple rule that losing weight means calories in must be less than calories out.

Timothy S. Harlan, M.D., a.k.a. Dr. Gourmet
Drgourmet.com