Hi everyone this is Monica Reinagel and you're listening to the nutrition

Divas quick and dirty tips for eating well and feeling fabulous.

There's been a lot of buzz this month about a new study that

punched a few new holes in the already tattered notion that weight gain and loss is

simply a matter of calories in versus calories out.

And several of you asked me to weigh in, so to speak, on this latest finding and its

implications and I'm happy to do so.

So what was this study all about?

Well, one big challenge with losing weight is keeping it off after you've lost it,

and most people eventually end up regaining most or all of the weight they've lost.

So these researchers took some people who had recently lost a significant amount of weight,

and they compared the effectiveness of three different maintenance plans.

One plan was low in fat, but high in refined carbohydrates.

You might think of this as the snack well approach.

The second plan had a moderate level of

carbohydrates neither high nor low but they emphasized carbohydrates with a low

glycemic load things like legumes, vegetables, intact grains, and in place of the missing carbohydrates they substituted fats.

In other words, a Mediterranean-style diet.

And the third diet was extremely low in carbohydrates and higher in both fat and protein,

basically an Atkins style diet.

Now all three of the plans had the same number of calories, which were precisely calibrated to match the number of calories each person was burning each day.

So not surprisingly, over the course of the study, no one lost or gained any weight.

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