Anyone who has been on a diet knows the hard work of counting calories, fat and carbs - and sometimes the sacrificing of flavor for function as we eat whole bran and dry fat-free cardboard food. The worst part about dieting is that nearly all people who manage to lose weight don’t succeed in keeping it off - in most cases the weight returns and sometimes dieters regain more than they lost.

A study at UCLA found that only a small minority of dieters consistently kept the weight off after losing it. Researchers also say that the yo-yo of losing and gaining weight may be linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function. The researchers concluded that many people would have been better off had they not gone on a diet at all.

Although a number of diets will work in the short term, researchers found that the largest predictor of future weight gain was whether or not the individual had recently lost weight on a diet.

According to Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study, the evidence suggests that exercise, not dieting, may be the key to maintaining weight loss.

“Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise,” Mann said. “That is not what we looked at in this study. Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss.”

Dieting Does Not Work, UCLA Researchers Report

If you’re sticking to your diet, you might not be sticking to your budget. A study in the March issue of the Journal of Consumer Research indicates that people who have exercised self-control in some other area are more prone to make impulse purchases.

People need self-regulatory control to avoid impulse buying but if their resources of self-control are depleted by something else, like a new exercise or diet program, they are less likely to be able to muster the sales resistance necessary.

So, if your husband wants to know why you bought so much at the mall, just tell him “I’m dieting”.

On a diet? You’ll spend more on impulse purchases

Did you know that a Calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree? Does that really matter?

Anyone who has tried dieting (read, everyone) has become intimately acquainted with the Calorie. We know there are 4 Calories in a gram of protein and a scary 9 Calories in a gram of fat. We know how many Calories of our daily allotment that donut would use up and how the remaining Calories leave us with the unsatisfying choice of only cucumber slices or some type of watery gruel for dinner.

Who invented the Calorie, or discovered it or whatever they did? James Hargrove, associate professor of foods and nutrition, University of Georgia attempts to answer that in an article to be published in December’s Journal of Nutrition. In it, Hargrove explains how the calorie came to be and how the science of nutrition first began in the US.

A quick search at Amazon gives 34,302 results for books having to do with Calories. There were titles on counting Calories and Calorie counts (which is different) and then the books that say Calories don’t count.

I liked the title Foods That Cause You To Lose Weight. I am just assuming you can eat more negative calories than you can positive ones. Maybe they can even cancel them out…I should find my junior high math book…

My favorite has to be Lose weight while you sleep: 4 strategies and 52 simple things you can do to help you burn more calories while at rest . There’s a concept I can get behind, a kind of active napping that relieves guilt and makes you thin.