Long-Term Effects of 4 Popular Diets on Weight Loss and Cardiovascular Risk Factors
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: We conducted a systematic review to examine the efficacy of the Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers (WW), and Zone diets, with a particular focus on sustained weight loss at ≥12 months. METHODS AND RESULTS: We systematically searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library of Clinical Trials to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in English with follow-up ≥4 weeks that examined the effects of these 4 popular diets on weight loss and cardiovascular risk factors. We identified 12 RCTs (n=2559) with follow-up ≥12 months: 10 versus usual care (5 Atkins, 4 WW, and 1 South Beach) and 2 head-to-head (1 of Atkins, WW, and Zone, and 1 of Atkins, Zone, and control). At 12 months, the 10 RCTs comparing popular diets to usual care revealed that only WW was consistently more efficacious at reducing weight (range of mean changes: -3.5 to -6.0 kg versus -0.8 to -5.4 kg; P<0.05 for 3/4 RCTs). However, the 2 head-to-head RCTs suggest that Atkins (range: -2.1 to -4.7 kg), WW (-3.0 kg), Zone (-1.6 to -3.2 kg), and control (-2.2 kg) all achieved modest long-term weight loss. Twenty-four-month data suggest that weight lost with Atkins or WW is partially regained over time. CONCLUSIONS: Head-to-head RCTs, providing the most robust evidence available, demonstrated that Atkins, WW, and Zone achieved modest and similar long-term weight loss. Despite millions of dollars spent on popular commercial diets, data are conflicting and insufficient to identify one popular diet as being more beneficial than the others.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.038 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.006 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".