Starting any diet with positive results may boost your mood, but for longer-term happiness the low-carb diet may not be the best choice. According to a new study comparing dieters on a low-fat or a low-carb diet for one year, the low-fat diet helps dieters remain more content. The study was published in the November 9 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine.

“This outcome suggests that some aspects of the low-carbohydrate diet may have had detrimental effects on mood that, over the term of one year, negated any positive effects of weight loss,” wrote the study authors from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation–Food and Nutritional Sciences in Australia.

The study involved 106 overweight and obese participants with an average age of 50. For the study, 55 participants were assigned to follow a very–low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, and 51 were assigned to a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet for one year.

After one year of following both groups of participants, researchers found that there was no difference in the amount of weight lost. The average weight lost was 30 pounds. Both groups also had an initial positive boost in mood after eight weeks on the diet, but only the low-fat dieters were able to maintain their positive moods.

The researchers note that the less positive moods among low-carb dieters could possibly be blamed on the social difficulty of adhering to the diet or the very structured nature of the low-carb diet. Read more about the low-fat versus low-carb study online.

If you tried a low-carb diet, how did you feel?

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Be a Happier Dieter

I usually boil mine whole for about 30-40 minutes, but you can also cut them in half and bake them in the oven at 350` for about an hour, rind side down. The spaghetti squash is done when the outer shell gives when you push on it.

Let your squash cool, then cut it in half. Scrape the seeds out of the center and discard them. Then with a fork or a spoon gently scrape out the “spaghetti.”

You can top it with anything you would normally top spaghetti with. I used my pasta meat sauce, but you could also use a marinara, cheese, or top it with chili.

Images (c) L Gerlach

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How To Cook Spaghetti Squash

Low-fat diets are more effective in preserving and promoting a healthy cardiovascular system than low-carbohydrate, Atkins’-like diets, according to a new study by researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

I have been preaching this for years. Being a diabetic I have to marry these 2 diets. Low carb has to meet low fat which at times is difficult, but I have learned what works.It just makes sense when you think about it. How can eating 4 hard boiled eggs and a pack of bacon be good for your heart? And didn’t the father of the Adkins diet die from a heart attack? There has to be a compromise.

“The higher fat content of a low-carbohydrate diet may put dieters at an increased risk of atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) because low-carbohydrate diets often reduce protection of the endothelium, the thin layer of cells that line the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The reduced production from the endothelium of nitric oxide, a specific chemical, puts the vessel at higher risk of abnormal thickening, greater clotting potential, and cholesterol deposition, all part of the atherosclerosis process,” says Dr. Gutterman.

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Low fat diets prove to have the upper hand over low carb diets according to heart disease