Kids' dieting may promote weight gain

CHICAGO, Illinois (Reuters) -- Children who diet may actually gain weight in the long run, perhaps because of metabolic changes but more likely because they resort to binge eating, doctors reported on Monday.

"Although medically supervised weight control may be beneficial for overweight youths, our data suggest that for many adolescents, dieting to control weight is not only ineffective, it may actually promote weight gain," said the report from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

The study was based on a look at more than 16,000 U.S. boys and girls age 9 to 14 from 1996 to 1998. It was published in the October issue of "Pediatrics," the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The report found that about 30 percent of the girls and 16 percent of the boys were dieting to one degree or another when the study began.

On the basis of questionnaires sent to the children, the researchers found that although children who said they were dieters reported being more active and getting fewer calories than their peers, they gained more weight than non-dieters.

One girl in the study who was a frequent dieter gained about 2 pounds per year more than other girls her age who were not dieting, the report said. In general, girls who dieted less often gained slightly less weight, but still more than non-dieters, it added.

Similar differences were observed among the boys.

The dieters could have gained more weight because their metabolism became more efficient, requiring fewer calories to maintain weight or become overweight.

A more likely reason, the report said, was that restrictive diets are often not maintained for long periods and are often followed by binge eating.

"In that scenario it would be the repeated cycles of overeating between the restrictive diets that would be responsible for weight gain," the study said.

The researchers suggested that young people and adults who are not severely overweight should be encouraged to adopt "a modest and therefore sustainable weight control strategy that includes physical activity and does not require severe restriction of total calories."

The number of overweight U.S. children is growing. In July the National Center for Health Statistics said 15 percent of children ages 6 to 18 were overweight in 2000, up from 6 percent in 1980.

Some 22 percent of black children and 25 percent of Mexican-American children were overweight in 2000, the center said.

Content provided by ArmMed Media
Revision date: 12 December 2007
Last revised by Amalia K. Gagarina, M.S., R.D.