Both methods help you lose weight when sugars and processed flours are limited.

If you are thinking about trying to lose weight in 2019, you will undoubtedly find a heated debate on the internet and among your friends and family about the best way to do it. It would seem that everyone has an opinion, and new fashions emerge every year.

Two major studies conducted last year added more fuel to a particularly polarizing topic: the responsibility of carbohydrates in making us fat. The studies yielded some clues for scientists, but like other nutrition studies, they can’t tell which diet – if there is one – is best for everyone.

That’s not going to satisfy those who want black-and-white answers, but nutritional research is extremely difficult, and even the most respected studies contain big caveats. People are so different that it is really impossible to do studies that show what works for long periods of time.

Before embarking on a plan to lose weight in the new year, we invite you to read some of the discoveries that were made in the past year.

Less carbohydrates, less weight?
It’s no longer known as “the Atkins diet,” but the low-carb school has started to catch on again. The idea is that the refined carbohydrates found in foods like white bread are quickly converted to sugar in the body, causing energy swings and hunger.

The argument is that if carbohydrate consumption is reduced, weight loss will be easier because the body will then burn more fat for fuel and the person will feel less hungry. A recent study appears to provide further support for advocates of low-carb diets. But, like many other studies, I try to understand just a glimmer of how the body works.

The study in question – one of whose organizers is the author of books promoting low-carbohydrate diets – examined whether different levels of carbohydrates affect how the body uses energy. The result was that, of the 164 people who participated, those who ate a low-carbohydrate diet burned more total calories than those who followed a high-carbohydrate diet.

The study did not say that people lost the most weight on the low-carb diet, and it never tried to measure that. Meals and snacks were rigorously controlled and continuously adjusted so that the weight of all participants remained stable.

David Ludwig, a lead author on the journal and a researcher at Boston Children’s Hospital, said the study suggests that limiting carbohydrates could make it easier to lose weight once you’ve lost weight. He added that such a strategy may offer the best results for people with diabetes or prediabetics.

Ludwig cautioned that the purpose of the study was not to investigate long-term health effects or to test real-life scenarios where people prepare their own food. He also said that it is necessary to replicate the results so that they can be validated.

Caroline Apovian of Boston University School of Medicine said the findings are interesting material for the scientific community, but should not be taken as advice for the common person looking to lose weight.

Avoid fat to stay slim?
For years they recommended us to reduce the consumption of fats, which are present in foods such as meat, nuts, eggs, butter and oil. Cutting fat was seen as a way to control weight, since one gram of fat has twice the calories as one gram of carbohydrates or protein.

Many argue that that advice had the opposite effect because it inadvertently gave us permission to eat cookies, cakes, and other foods that were not fat-free, but packed with the refined sugars and carbohydrates that are now considered responsible for our waist growth.

Nutrition experts gradually moved away from generic recommendations about limiting fat for weight loss. Fats are necessary to absorb important nutritional substances and can help us feel satisfied. That does not mean that we must live on meat coated in butter to be healthy.

Bruce Y. Lee, a professor of international health at Johns Hopkins University, says that the lessons learned from the anti-fat fad should be applied to the anti-carbohydrate fad – don’t oversimplify the advice. “You are always looking for the easy way out,” says Lee.