If you do the work, you lose the weight!

Not surprisingly, participants in the first year of the Montana CVD and Diabetes Prevention Project who most closely followed the DPP curriculum lost more weight than participants who did not.

Participants who monitored their fat grams (by writing them down in a food journal) at least 4 days of the week, every week and exercised at least 150 minutes per week (about 30 minutes a day, 5 days a week) lost an average of 19 lbs.

By contrast, participants who exercised at least 150 minutes per week, but never kept track of their fat grams only lost 4 lbs, on average.

Why monitor fat grams?

In order to lose weight, we must eat less calories than our body burns. High fat foods are calorie dense, meaning there are a lot of calories packed into a small amount of food. There are 9 calories in 1 gram of fat, compared to 4 calories in 1 gram of carbohydrates (or carbs). We can cut more calories by reducing a high fat food than we could if we reduced the same portion of low fat food. Also, eating a diet high in fat is associated with high cholesterol, which can put us at risk for heart disease and diabetes.