- Researchers say how you eat can help reduce the effects from the genetic risks of obesity.
- They say portion control and calorie counting are two strategies that can help combat issues such as emotional eating.
- Experts say different dietary plans work differently for each person, so consulting with a medical professional is advised.
Dieting techniques could lessen the impact of obesity related genes that contribute to hunger and over-eating.
That’s according to a study published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
In their findings, researchers report that people who have a higher genetic risk of obesity can reduce the impact of those genes by utilizing dietary restraint techniques such as calorie counting as well as being mindful of portion control.
“At a time when high calorie foods are aggressively marketed to us, it’s more important than ever to understand how genes influence BMI [body mass index]. We already know that these genes impact traits and behaviors such as hunger and emotional eating, but what makes this study different is that we tested the influence of two types of dietary restraint – rigid and flexible – on the effect of these behaviors,” Shahina Begum, a psychology PhD student at the University of Exeter in England and lead author of the study, said in a press statement.
“What we discovered for the first time was that increasing both types of restraint could potentially improve BMI in people genetically at risk, meaning that restraint-based interventions could be useful to target the problem,” Begum added.
More than
Research
To examine the impact dietary restraint techniques could have on genetic risk of obesity, the researchers examined 3,780 people between 22 and 92 years of age living in…
Read the full article here