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UCLA STUDY SHOWS DIETING MAY BE A CHRONIC STRESSOR, AND A CAUSE OF WEIGHT GAIN | |
| Contact: A. Janet Tomiyama Phone: 310-562-7878 Email: tomiyama@psych.ucla.edu Embargoed until: March 5, 2005 |
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Vancouver, BC, Canada - Dieting may actually cause stress, and perhaps even weight gain, UCLA psychologists report today at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting in Vancouver, BC, Canada. One hundred and sixteen undergraduate UCLA women filled out questionnaires assessing dieting and chronic stress. Results showed that knowing whether a person was dieting at one point was a reliable predictor of whether the person would perceive chronic stress nine weeks later. The implication is that dieting may be a chronic stressor. "This finding is really alarming because chronic stress has been linked with many negative health outcomes including high blood pressure, depression, and even, ironically, weight gain," said A. Janet Tomiyama, M.A., the study's lead author. "Your diet may be putting you at risk for the exact thing you are trying to avoid." Tomiyama warns that the results are preliminary. "This is just a first step in finding out whether dieting causes chronic stress. We are not advocating that everyone rush out and eat whatever they want to. What we want to do is see whether the consequences of dieting are as positive as many people seem to think." The UCLA team's next goal is to see whether dieters show biological signs of chronic stress in addition to perceived stress. Their ultimate goal is to determine whether chronic stress might be one of the reasons why diets don't seem to work in the long-term. "We've known for a long time that diets don't work, and we've also known that chronic stress causes weight gain," Tomiyama said. "This is the first time that anyone put those two pieces of information together." | |
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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Vicki White, Managing Editor for Manuscript Production,
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