The Diet Myths: What does make us fat?
updated the 12 June 2014 à 21:59A study suggests that it is less likely to gain weight as a result of eating fatty food than if you are lacking of calcium. Here’s how.
“Not necessarily what you believe,” quips Dr Jean-Michel Lecerf, author of “Everyone’s true weight”. “A study published in 2009 has shown that it is less likely to gain weight as a result of eating fatty food than if you are lacking of calcium!” cites the endocrinologist and head of nutrition at the Pasteur Institute. Ahead of fatty, calcium-rich, sweet or savoury food, nutritional specialists in eating habits of Task Force of Obesity and overweight (GROS) members defend the idea that everything that constrains our relationship with food, constrains our weight loss. In other words, it is the fear of gaining weight or not being able to lose weight that in fact makes us gain weight!
“These concerns related to weight end up triggering the craving to eat in order to calm the stress of weight,” says Dr Jean-Philippe Zermati 3 . The irony of the mechanism is that “for eating to satisfy and relax, we choose to eat the food we love – comfort food – often rich, fatty, sugary, and piled with things that give us a bad image.” Above all, the desire to manage weight leads us to develop strategies, building beliefs about what we should or should not eat. Constant monitoring and rationalising (called cognitive restriction) certainly sticks to the character of some people, even after they succeed. “If they are already like that (in developing healthy eating habits), so much the better,” admits the dietician-nutritionist Marie-Laure Thollier, technical director at GROS for seven years. Except that, taking into account the general dissatisfaction prevailing in slimming and blind enthusiasm for any new technique that makes you lose weight, only a tiny minority of us seems to have found that right balance.
Read more in our ‘Diet Myths’ report:
What makes us lose weight?
Is chocolate really fattening?
Do we have to follow a strict regime to lose weight?
Should we deprive ourselves of our favourite food?
Mathieu Rached
