Does dieting make you fat?

Dieting Makes You Fat, the title of a 1980s book on weight control, is a popularised paradox, conveying a conclusion that is consistent with personal experience and the reported failure of most dietary approaches in the treatment of obesity. Few studies have been designed specifically to test this association. Yet there are prospective data showing that baseline dieting or dietary restraint increases the risk of weight gain, especially in women. Metabolic adaptations and the disinhibited eating of restrained eaters have been the most commonly cited explanations for such weight gain. Dietary restraint has also been implicated in the development and persistence of binge eating. The present paper critically evaluates the evidence supporting this paradox and reaches a rather different conclusion. Dieting: Obesity: Treatment of obesity ‘Dieting makes you fat’. This extraordinary proposal was the title of a book published in the UK in 1983. Written with ample expert consultation, Cannon & Einzig (1983) dedicated it to ‘the scores of millions of people in the West who are fatter than they want to be, who have tried dieting, who have found that dieting does not work, and who want to know why. ’ A blend of personal experience, science and contemporary opinion, this was among th