Tailor made diets

Evidence was found last year that could help to differentiate which diets are better for each individual.
Because of how everyone is different, diets can affect us in different ways. The BBC has teamed up with experts in the field of obesity and nutrition, to investigate how different people can be affected by foods and what diet would suit them the most, to get the best results for weight and health. Over three months, 75 dieters underwent a series of tests and were monitored in their homes. The study was directed by research teams from Oxford and Cambridge.
Focusing on three different types of eater, ‘feasters’, ‘cravers’ and ’emotional eaters’, different gene mechanisms were found to make people want to eat more at different times under different situations. For example, feasters, people who found it hard to stop eating once they started, produce low levels of certain hormones that tell the brain, once food has reached the gut, that they can stop eating.
By adapting diets for each individual person, it can become easier to break the bad habits they have developed. For example, it was found that the feasters fared better on high protein, low glucose diets that would make them feel fuller for longer.
Professor Susan Jebb of Oxford University, explained that, “People often think diets are about willpower. Forget that, diets are about habits. There has never been a study that says people can will themselves to lose weight, but they can change their habits.”
With diets tailored to their bodies, breaking these habits could become a lot easier. Throughout the experiment, the participants managed to lose a total of 103 stone.