Want to stay slim? forget strict calorie watching

Today everybody wants to be slim and trim, being slim has become the mantra of today. A lot of reports and articles have suggested ways and means to remain fit,slim and trim. A recnet report tells a differest story.

A recent study has suggested that a diet free of animal products and low in fat may help trim the waistline without the task of strict calorie watching.

Researchers found that of 64 postmenopausal, overweight women, those assigned to follow a low-fat vegan diet for 14 weeks lost an average of 13 pounds, compared with a weight loss of about 8 pounds among women who followed a standard low-cholesterol diet.

The weight loss came despite the fact that the women were given no limits on their portion sizes or daily calories -- and despite the fact that the vegan diet boosted their carbohydrate intake.

"People imagine carbohydrates to be fattening, but they are not," said lead study author Dr Neal D Barnard, an adjunct associate professor of medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D C.

He is also president of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit group that advocates vegetarianism as part of preventive medicine.

The greater weight loss among women on the vegan diet may stem from specific metabolic effects, Barnard said.

He pointed out that the diet improved the women's sensitivity to insulin, a hormone that ushers sugar from the blood and into cells to be used for energy.

This was also accompanied by an increase in what's known as the thermic effect of food, the amount of calories the body expends to process and store food.

The vegan diet improved women's insulin sensitivity to a greater a degree than the comparison diet did, though the difference was not statistically significant, meaning the finding could be due to chance.

Barnard and his colleagues at George Washington and Georgetown universities report the findings in the American Journal of Medicine.