the complex diet added another burden of perception of difficulty and effort

Something that we have always suspected at Ukmedix News has been finally proven in a research project which examined whether the complexity of a diet plan had an impact on whether it would be adhered to.

The research done in Germany on almost 400 women involved two different diet plans, the first which was simple with easy shopping lists and meal plans, and the second with a detailed point system which gave individual values to every food item and required the volunteers to restrict themselves to eating a set amount of points every day. The female dieters were asked to complete questionnaires over the two months trial period.

Professor Peter Todd from the department of psychology and brain sciences at Indiana University explained that the complex diet added another burden of perception of difficulty and effort which led to higher numbers of people giving up. The difficulty with the complicated diet was even observed among the groups of people who believed that they were capable of following a strict eating plan to lose weight. Professor Jutta Mata at Stanford University put it simply by saying that even just thinking that the diet was complicated could “undermine your efforts”.

If you are busy person with an active life the last thing you need to do is start measuring, weighing and evaluating every single item of food that you eat. You will soon get tired of doing this and end up going back to your old unhealthy eating habits. What you need is an overall general picture of what you should and shouldn’t eat rather than a super strict regime. The full study was published by the journal Appetite.

If you want some simple but effective diet tips have a look at some of our other stories which get great feedback and real results.