"A study reported in the June 2005 Journal of the American Dietetic Association (Vol. 105, No. 6), by University of California at Davis nutrition researcher Linda Bacon, PhD, and colleagues randomly assigned 78 obese women who were chronic dieters either to a “Health at Any Size” condition or to a diet condition that used standard behavioral weight-loss approaches, including helping people to restrict fat and calories intake, monitor their diets and do regular aerobic exercise. The women all received six months of the intervention, followed by six months of group support. The team evaluated them at six months and again at two years. At the end of six months, both groups showed health and psychological improvements, and only the diet group had lost weight. But two years later, the picture had changed. “Health at Any Size” participants retained the same weight they held at the beginning of the study, and they showed a range of psychological and physical benefits including higher self-esteem, less depression, lower cholesterol and blood-pressure levels, and fewer eating-disordered behaviors such as binging and purging. The diet group members, though, not only regained most of the weight they had lost, but lost the health improvements they had made and showed significant drops in self-esteem."
— Monitor on Psychology - Goodbye, scale. Hello, health. (via ilovefat) (via lovemeformexox)