A recently released report from the Womens Health Initiative has come up with interesting results in the field of diet, weight loss and nutrition, which lies in the face of much accepted wisdom. The research is suggesting that the fat content in a diet plan is not of importance and therefore confusing those people who were led to believe that the amount of fat eaten was a fundamental of dieting and weight loss.

The study looked at different weight loss patterns and one section of the research examined the body mass of nineteen thousand post menopausal females and how their weight fluctuated when they followed a low fat diet. The females were given instructions to lower dietary fat to twenty percent of their calorie intake. The majority of the females did not attain that result but merely lower the dietary fat from an average of 39% fat to a figure of 30% fat that was taken to be a low fat diet.

Nearly three quarters of the women were overweight or suffering from obesity at the start of the research. The study was designed to evaluate whether fat consumption alone would have an effect on weight and so the female participants were told to compensate with more carbs for the fat that was taken from their diets.

The results showed that eating a lower amount of fat and replacing it with cards would not cause weight gain, though the study authors advised that the fat that should be cut out was the trans fat and saturated types of fat.

The other conclusion was that it was not possible to lose weight by a reduction of fat alone without either exercising or reducing calories overall. This means that for the women (all of whom were over 50 yesrs old), the reduction in fat was pointless for weight loss unless the calories were also cut back or you actually made an extra effort to burn off calories with exercise and physical activity.

The WHI research on low fat diets showed that the women claimed to have lowered their calorie intake on average by 360 calories daily. This only resulted in a very slight weight loss over the seven years of the study which led the study authors to believe that not all the information on diet provided was accurate or that they needed to be more active. Metabolic speed is lowered with age and so activity is doubly important the older you get.