Weight lost on a liquid low-calorie diet DOES stay off

DRAMATIC weight loss achieved through a lowcalorie liquid diet can be maintained and knocks years off your heart age, according to new research. The research showed obese patients who followed an 800-calorie-a-day diet of formula soups and shakes under medical supervision lost more than 10 per cent of their body weight — around 2st — in four months.

And when they continued to use the meal replacements, either daily or intermittently every few months, 69 per cent kept the weight off.

They also saw health benefits, reducing their heart age (a calculation based on risk factors such as blood pressure, cholesterol and smoking) by five years — cutting their risk of heart attack and stroke.

The patients had an average real age of 63, but before losing weight, they had an average heart age of 69. After losing weight, four years later — when they were 67 — their heart age was just 68.

The findings, presented at the UK Congress on Obesity in Newcastle earlier this month, come as the NHS announced last week it will be offering overweight people with type 2 diabetes this kind of diet as part of radical plans to combat the disease.

RESEARCH has already found that almost half of patients with type 2 diabetes on this diet were in remission within a year. However, it has long been feared that, after sticking to a liquid diet, patients will inevitably pile on the pounds again once they return to eating normal food.

This new research suggests that is not necessarily the case.

The study involved 153 patients with knee osteoarthritis from Denmark who had lost around 13 per cent of their body weight through a 16-week, low-calorie liquid diet and maintained that weight loss for a year by replacing one meal a day with a liquid food. Half then continued to replace one meal a day with a liquid diet for three years, while the rest used the liquid replacement intermittently — once every four months for five weeks.

The study, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last year, found that after three years, 106 patients — 69 per cent — across both groups had been able to maintain an average weight loss of 10 kg.

All patients found the weight loss eased the pain in their joints and led to an average ten point drop in their systolic blood pressure (the amount of pressure in your arteries when your heart contracts).

‘These results challenge the assumption that weight regain in the long-term is inevitable,’ said lead researcher Professor Henning Bliddal, director of The Parker Arthritis Institute at Frederiksberg Hospital, Copenhagen.

‘These results should turn osteoarthritis treatment upside down. We should now start with weight loss if the patient with knee osteoarthritis is heavy.’

Further analysis of the results from the study, which was partfunded by the Cambridge Weight Plan diet company, revealed the five-year improvement in their heart age.

Tom Sanders, an emeritus professor of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, warns that low-calorie liquid diets can cause malnutrition unless supplemented with essential nutrients in the long run.

‘Once the desired amount of weight is lost on a very low-calorie diet, there is a need to change to a more modest maintenance diet,’ he says.

‘The results are encouraging, but more research needs to be done before we introduce this type of intervention widely.’

MEANWHILE, it’s not just weight that can affect your risk of developing osteoarthritis — so can what you eat.

Findings from the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation in the U.S. showed that, in mice, a high-carbohydrate diet increased joint inflammation — an early sign of osteoarthritis.

Human trials are now planned.