From: Yahoo.com
TUESDAY, Jan. 19 (HealthDay News) -- The more complex a person s
diet plan, the sooner the person will abandon it, a new study finds.
The finding came from a study of 390 German women who were using one of
two diet plans. The simpler plan provided shopping lists for dieters and a
meal plan they were to follow. The more complex plan assigned point values
to every food and instructed participants to eat only a certain number of
points each day.
The women completed questionnaires over an eight-week span.
For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of
quantities and items eaten, their subjective impression of the difficulty
of the diet can lead them to give up on it, Peter Todd, a professor in
the department of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University,
said in a university news release.
The effect endured even after the researchers accounted for the
influence of significant social-cognitive factors such as self-efficacy --
people s belief that they re capable of achieving a goal, such as adhering
to a diet regimen to lose weight.
Even if you think you can succeed, thinking that the diet is too
cognitively complex can undermine your efforts, the study s co-author,
Jutta Mata, a psychology professor at Stanford University, explained in
the news release.
The study was published online in Appetite.
Mata suggested that people considering going on a diet should look at a
number of diet plans and consider how many rules a plan has and how many
things a dieter needs to keep in mind while using the plan.
If they decide to go with a more complex diet, which could be more
attractive, for instance, if it allows more flexibility, they should
evaluate how difficult they find doing the calculations and monitoring
their consumption, she said. If they find it very difficult, the
likelihood that they will prematurely give up the diet is higher, and they
should try to find a different plan.
More information
The U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney
Diseases has suggestions for selecting a weight-loss program.
|
