Health Matters
Food cravings are the downfall of many dieters, who feel locked in an eternal battle with their willpower to resist the tempting sweets, snacks and other foods they love.
However, researchers in food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign say in a new study that eating dessert may be the optimal strategy for losing weight, keeping it off and keeping cravings at bay. Dieters in a clinical trial who incorporated craved foods into a balanced meal plan lost more weight during the 12-month weight-loss programme and their cravings remained minimal through the subsequent 12 months of maintenance.
Then-graduate student Nouf W. Alfouzan and nutrition professor Manabu T. Nakamura said that dieters’ food cravings decreased while losing weight and remained minimal as long as they did not regain weight. The participants were part of a larger project conducted with physicians at Carle Clinic in Urbana, Illinois, that aimed to broaden the outreach of an in-person weight-loss program called the Individualised Dietary Improvement Programme by converting it to an online format called EMPOWER.
“We recruited obese patients ages 18 to 75 who had comorbidities like hypertension and diabetes and could benefit from losing weight. Cravings are a big problem for many people. If they have a lot of cravings, it is very difficult to lose weight. Even when they are able to control their cravings and lose weight, if the cravings come back, they regain the weight,” Nakamura said.
Although many dieters reported in prior research that their cravings decreased while losing weight, Nakamura and Alfouzan said it remained unclear whether these changes persisted when they reached their weight-loss goal or quit dieting while trying to maintain their weight. Alfouzan, the first author of the current study, wanted to investigate that along with whether reduced cravings correlated with greater weight loss.
The dietary program used in the study educates dieters about key nutrients, helping them make informed decisions about their food selections until sustainable dietary changes are achieved, Nakamura said. Dieters used a data visualisation tool that plots foods’ protein, fibre and calories so they can enhance nutrition while minimizing the calories they consume.
During the first year, participants engaged in 22 online nutrition education sessions created by scholars at the university’s Centre for Innovation in Teaching and Learning that included strategies for dealing with cravings.
“If you are eating and snacking randomly, it’s very hard to control. Some dietary programs exclude certain foods. Our plan used an ‘inclusion strategy,’ in which people incorporated small portions of craved foods within a well-balanced meal,” Nakamura said.
Every six months participants completed a questionnaire about their cravings for specific foods. These included high-fat foods such as hot dogs and fried chicken, fast food fats like hamburgers and chips, sweets such as cakes and cookies, and carbohydrates such as biscuits and pancakes.
Participants who lost more than 5% by the end of the study experienced consistent reductions in the frequency and intensity of their cravings while those who lost less than that did not. The team also found that individuals’ craving for food in general and for specific types of foods such as sweets and carbohydrates diminished during the year of weight loss and stabilized during maintenance.
