This time. Over 40% of the population has been on a diet in the last six months, according to a recent study released and funded by a health food company.

 But in that way, as elsewhere, there are no shortcuts. On the contrary: we can create serious health problems, warns the head of the Section of Endocrinology and Nutrition, Hospital de Getafe, Susana Monereo. "The perfect diet does not exist," he recalls.

 "The secret to losing weight is as simple as adapting intake to our lifestyle. We should remove the word diet from our vocabulary-stands-and move to the concept of healthy eating, that this itself will allow us to lose kilos in a healthy way. "
 
The president of the Spanish Nutrition Society, Javier Aranceta. bears repeating that approach as a mantra for years.

 "Being overweight can not be fought with silver bullets, which by definition do not exist, but with a balanced diet, tailored to the needs of each, and accompanied by daily exercise,"

 The totem last fall has been the famous Dukan diet, which like all its predecessors, has also been questioned.

After turning his book into a 'best-seller with more than 12 million readers in a decade, doctor visits have shown that the regime of French nutritionist based on preferential consumption of protein, can also be detrimental to health.

Different studies point to what the agency gala Food Health Safety confirms: 80% of people under the care of Pierre Dukan thinning recovered the initial weight in just twelve months.

"All the alternative fashion work in a similar way," relates Aranceta. "They want to confuse the body, sticking out of its normal metabolic pathway. What you get is to induce you to consume their fat stores, but eventually the body reacts, he discovers the trick and reset, which produces the popular 'yo-yo' (What is lost is recovered equally easy ease). This system is worth. "


The French doctor denies it, but experts like Dr. Monereo claim to have seen in his own practice brought the consequences of such a remedy. The diet fails. Patients lose weight, but they desert the regime, they recover quickly. Increases anxiety and as a result, there are other eating disorders, mainly binge eating, and there are also "very significant losses of calcium and vitamin D" to promote the future development of osteoporosis.

"Our patients, he cautions that they are people jumping from one diet to another, which inevitably leads them to obesity and many chronic problems of malnutrition."

The unit runs in Madrid is a service of morbid obesity surgery, that is sick, where they operated about 200 people a year.

Madrid Specialist ensures that the only 'trick' that applies to lose weight and keep it in time is to take the decision to make a healthy life. That, he says, is to eat everything in smaller amounts. Proteins, carbohydrates, fats, dairy ... everything and accompany the intake of exercise, which is "basic and essential."

You have to burn calories, even walking more, getting off the subway or the bus at the previous stop. "It thins to eat this or that. If you ask, everyone knows what's fat and what not. The weight he adds, is lost when a power balance begins to be negative, when you eat less than what is spent. "

Obesity, Aranceta insists, is not an aesthetic problem, but of health. In addition to muscle overload, excess weight causes higher rates of cholesterol and glucose, hypertension, and because of this, other chronic diseases like diabetes and vascular diseases, from angina pectoris to stroke.

'Relatively small weight losses of 5% or 10%, doing what we all know, manage to obtain a very important metabolic performance if achieved maintain over time. "

With that small change, cholesterol levels and high blood pressure to normal reduces to two points.

The nutritionist advises Basque "escape" of any eating plan to get out of the traditional diet, based on the Mediterranean model. They are not worth that promise weight loss greater than 5 kilos, advertise with messages such as 'no effort' or are impossible to maintain over time. 'Such recommendations can only get thin the patient's pocket, sometimes compromising their health and emotional balance. "

"This weight loss is as lentils, if you want the you take and if not, leave it. There are no miracles nor will be. "