3 RULES BEHIND EVERY DIET THAT WORKS

We're fed up with navigating all the tips and advice online telling us how to lose weight, so we asked an obesity expert to reveal whether anything actually works for weight loss

- PROF GILES YEO

Many of us would like to shed a few kilos – and keep them off. This has never been more relevant, as three years of pandemic living has resulted in some of us putting on unwanted weight. But if you head online for some advice, prepare to be disappointed. Doctors, scientists and influencers seem to be locked in a tussle over what exactly works when it comes to shedding fat. There are the likes of diet expert Prof Tim Spector, who set TikTok ‘influencers’ into a sweaty flurry over his soundbite on the Diary Of A CEO podcast when he said “exercise doesn’t work”. To clarify, it is of course possible to lose weight through exercise. After all, Tour de France cyclists eat around 5,000 calories a day and still lose weight during the three-week race.

The problem is, most of us mere mortals don’t exercise anywhere near enough for this to be effective. Others, like myself, have argued that counting calories has its limitations, and we shouldn’t slavishly follow the calorie counts listed on food packaging.

Still more people quibble about which diet (of the hundreds out there) will actually get you looking lean, and permanently so. I’m not in the business of endorsing any one of the many different dietary approaches that rear their heads online, because – whatever anyone tells you – there is no magical ‘one-sizefits-all’ solution. But do any diets actually work? The answer is, surprisingly, yes, although perhaps not for the reason that is often being marketed. In one respect, the truth about diets is a simple one: for a diet to work, there has to be a calorie deficit. If we forensically examine all the diets that show some evidence of working, the vast majority all share one (or more) of these three characteristics:

1. They explicitly restrict calories.