Can a High-Fat Diet Cause Weight Loss?

In the mid-1950s, physicians observed that in short-term experiments, people who followed a low-calorie, high-fat diet lost weight more quickly than those who followed a low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diet.

Research Experiments:

Researchers followed 63 participants for one year, assigning them to either a low-calorie, high-fat diet or a low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diet. At the end of the study, there was no significant difference in weight loss between the two groups.

Another study, published in 2005, followed 160 participants who were assigned to a specific diet for one year. One group followed a low-calorie, high-fat diet, while the other followed a low-calorie, high-carbohydrate diet. At the end of the year, weight loss did not differ significantly between the two groups. This study was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Conclusion:

Reduced-calorie diets lead to weight loss regardless of whether they emphasize fat, protein, or carbohydrates.

A Different Perspective:

However, there is another point of view from Dr. Kris Verburgh. He argues that a calorie is not always just a calorie. In other words, 300 calories from a hamburger are not the same as 300 calories from broccoli. Numerous studies suggest that calories are not all equal.

One study found that women who consumed a handful of walnuts—about 300 calories per day—did not gain weight. This is because different foods are processed differently by the body. A hamburger is a highly processed food containing unhealthy fats, whereas broccoli is a plant-based food that is more easily digested.

According to Dr. Kris Verburgh, a medical doctor and researcher, calorie measurements are obtained by burning foods in a laboratory beaker to determine the number of calories in food. However, the human body is not a laboratory beaker—it is far more complex. The fats in walnuts, for example, are not completely burned for calories but are used by the body for cell membranes, brain function, and other vital processes. In contrast, the fats found in hamburgers are less efficiently utilized, and any excess that is not eliminated can be stored in the body, leading to weight gain.

In short, calories differ depending on the type of food you eat. Plant-based foods have fewer effective calories because most of their components are utilized by the body to support the proper functioning of cells, tissues, and organs. In contrast, excessive consumption of meat and processed carbohydrate products provides calories that are less efficiently used by the body. Much of their content offers little nutritional value, requiring the digestive system to secrete more enzymes and work harder just to process them.