If You Want to Lose Weight, Let Someone Else Choose Your Diet

If you're trying to lose weight on your own with no help from others, you may want to rethink your strategy. According to Huffington Post, researchers have found that you are more likely to lose weight if you have someone else choosing your diet for you.

Researchers predicted that people who chose their own diet plan would lose more weight than those who had no choice in the matter. But the opposite turned out to be true: Over the course of 48 weeks, dieters who chose their own plan lost about 12.5 pounds, while those assigned a diet plan lost about 15 pounds, reported Reuters.

The study, conducted at the Durham VA Medical Center in North Carolina, surveyed 207 obese adults with a questionnaire that listed 70-plus food items rated on a scale of "like a lot" or "like very little." Using that information, researchers were able to figure out if participants preferred low-carb or low-fat diets. From there, participants were divided into "choice" and "comparison" groups.

The choice group could choose between a low-carb or low-fat diet, while the comparison group was randomly assigned one diet or the other. People in the choice group were given the option to change their diet 12 weeks in, but very few actually switched diets.

Want to read more? Click here to see the original article on The Huffington Post!