Why crash diets may actually be good for you

THOUGH some may take the latest research with a pinch of calories, there's finally scientific evidence that shows the ordinary woman's (and many a man's) faddy food habit – crash dieting – actually works.

So, chop up the celery, boil that egg, steam me a green bean – for tomorrow we starve.

Yes, there is big news from the here-today- but-by-golly-it-will-be-gone-tomorrow world of the crash dieter.

A new report in The Lancet, a respected medical journal, says you can achieve as much weight loss by wild, crazy, hard-core food reduction as you can by eating sensibly and nibbling the edges off your calorie consumption, like a squirrel down to its last nut.

For those of us who have done it all – from Noakes to Atkins, from Paleo to the Cabbage diet, 5:2, 4:3, 6:1 – only to see our extreme willpower or desperation mocked as pointless, the statistics couldn't be sweeter than an agave syrup and lemon infused glass of hot water before bed.

You said we couldn't lose a 3kg in two weeks by chewing broccoli florets? Yeah, well suck on that, you sensible eaters with your steady moods and lack of hunger-driven insomnia. Because real scientists say crash-dieting may be more effective than goody- two-shoes weight loss programmes.

The trial comes hot from the deep fat fryer that is Australia, where they do know a thing or two about food. Not only is the country's affluence combined with a car culture resulting in 50% of Aussies being classified as overweight, but the nation is also now a big fat fourth in the OECD's ranking of advanced nations with the largest proportion of obese citizens (28.3%), behind the US, Mexico and New Zealand.

No wonder Australia is also the home of the most extreme crash diet ever fiendishly devised – the cult of "breatharianism" where you don't consume anything at all but sunlight.

Still, back in Melbourne, it seems researchers found that eight out of 10 people assigned to a rapid 12-week weight loss programme achieved their goal compared with just 50% of steady dieters (who were allotted a yawning chasm of 36 weeks to strip off the excess timber).

But it's not all about the plummeting scales though, is it? What about maintaining that new figure – is it worth splashing out on a pair of size 10 skinny jeans?

The Aussies claim that the number of people who regained weight after three years was the same in both groups, 71%, suggesting that crash dieting is better than gradual weight loss in the short term and no worse in the long term.

Finally, the only diet most of us can follow – the ordinary woman's faddy food habit – has scientific backing too.

The researchers suggest that losing weight quickly motivates dieters to stick with their programme because they see rapid results. They even claim that because very low calorie crash diets cut out carbohydrates, which usually fuel the body, they therefore force the body to burn fat more quickly.

Prof Susan Jebb, professor of diet and population health at the University of Oxford, has said the research is "important and well conducted". – The Daily Telegraph