Which Diet Fits Your Genes?
Why do some diets work better than others? Why can your best friend lose 10 pounds with a low-carb diet and your weight just hovers? Why can some people eat just about everything and still stay skinny?
It’s all in the genes.
Mindy Dopler Nelson, Ph.D., of Stanford University reported the results of her study at the American Heart Associate Conference. She found that a single nuceotide polymorphism caused women to loose five times as much weight on the Atkins diet compared with women who didn’t have the gene.
Dr. Nelson studied women on four popular weight loss diets — Atkins, Zone, Learn, and Ornish. Within each of the diet groups, there were women who had lost over 15 kilograms as well as people who gained 5 kilograms. These women had no statistically significant differences in body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol levels, insulin or glucose. The only difference was the genotype.
Remember that everyone loses weight when you limit calories, but how you get those calories seems to make a difference in how much weight you lose over time. Some of us are low-carb losers and some are low-fat losers. At this time there’s no way to know which one you may be if you don’t know your genotype. Will this be the wave of the future?
Dr. Nelson acknowledged that the trial was relatively small and that the findings need to be confirmed in a larger trial. For now, if you aren’t seeing your weight loss with one type of diet, it might be time to switch to another.
*This blog post was originally published at EverythingHealth*
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