Low-Glycemic Diet Improves Weight Loss for Some Dieters

Those with high insulin secretion may achieve better weight loss with low-glycemic load diet

TUESDAY, May 15 (HealthDay News) -- Overweight individuals with high insulin secretion may achieve greater weight loss by selecting diets with a low-glycemic load rather than diets that are low in fat, according to the results of a randomized trial published in the May 16 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Cara B. Ebbeling, Ph.D., of Children's Hospital Boston, and colleagues randomized 73 obese adults, aged 18 to 35 years, to six months of either a low-glycemic load diet (consisting of 40 percent carbohydrate and 35 percent fat) or a low-fat diet (consisting of 55 percent carbohydrate and 20 percent fat), and compared weight loss from each diet as a function of baseline insulin secretion.

Overall, both diet groups achieved the same reductions in weight and body fat composition, losing about 4 kg and about 1.3 percent of body fat at six months. However, those individuals with baseline insulin secretion above the median achieved greater decreases in body weight (5.8 versus 1.2 kg) and body fat percentage (2.6 versus 0.9 percent) than the low-fat dieters.

"Reducing glycemic load may be especially important to achieve weight loss among individuals with high insulin secretion," the authors conclude. "Regardless of insulin secretion, a low-glycemic load diet has beneficial effects on concentrations of high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and triglycerides but not on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol."

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