Study finds cutting dietary fat reduces body fat more than cutting carbs

NIH | SEPTEMBER 24, 2015

In a recent study, restricting dietary fat led to body fat loss at a rate 68 percent higher than cutting the same number of carbohydrate calories when adults with obesity ate strictly controlled diets.

A scale shows pasta/carbs weighed against butter/fat. Photo: Dr. Kevin Hall, The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, United States

Compared to the reduced-fat diet, the reduced-carb diet was particularly effective at lowering insulin secretion and increasing fat burning, resulting in significant body fat loss. But interestingly, study participants lost even more body fat during the fat-restricted diet, as it resulted in a greater imbalance between the fat eaten and fat burned.

These findings counter the theory that body fat loss necessarily requires decreasing insulin, thereby increasing the release of stored fat from fat tissue and increasing the amount of fat burned by the body.

The researchers had previously simulated the study with a math model of human metabolism, whose body fat predictions matched the data later collected in the study. When simulating what might happen over longer periods, the model predicted relatively small differences in body fat loss with widely varying ratios of carbs to fat.

Those results suggest the body may eventually minimize differences in body fat loss when diets have the same number of calories. More research is needed to assess the physiological effects of fat and carb reduction in the long term.

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