After having successfully achieved weight loss, Dr Cara Ebbeling and colleagues at the Children’s Hospital Boston, assigned participants to one of three maintenance diet groups.

The diets included a conventional low-fat diet, a low Glycemic Index diet (GL), and a very low carb diet.  The resting energy expenditure (REE; basal metabolic rate, or how many calories you burn doing nothing) and also total energy expenditure (TEE; what you burn off doing nothing, plus any physical activity) was measured in the study.

The low GL diet resulted in a greater resting energy expenditure than the low-fat diet.   So the body doesn’t slow down it’s metabolism as much when you eat low GL, as it does when you eat low-fat.

The total calorie burn was also greater on the low GL diets.  The lowest GL diet burned 300 more daily calories than the low-fat diet.  That can equate to an hour of exercise.

More proof is coming forward about the capabilities of changing ones metabolic rate.  Weight loss is not just about the calories you eat.  This study confirms that there is a science behind the maintenance of metabolism.  Following a low GL diet is more likely to help you keep the weight off after dieting by helping you burn more calories at rest (increasing REE).  The following findings from the Journal of the American Medical Association explain the results from the study:

“The low-fat diet produced changes in energy expenditure and serum leptin^42– 44 that would predict weight regain. In addition, this conventionally recommended diet had unfavorable effects on most of the metabolic syndrome components studied herein. In contrast, the very low-carbohydrate diet had the most beneficial effects on energy expenditure and several metabolic syndrome components, but this restrictive regimen may increase cortisol excretion and CRP. The low–glycemic index diet appears to have qualitatively similar, although smaller, metabolic benefits to the very low-carbohydrate diet, possibly without the deleterious effects on physiological stress and chronic inflammation. These findings suggest that a strategy to reduce glycemic load rather than dietary fat may be advantageous for weight-loss maintenance and cardiovascular disease prevention.”