A calorie deficit is primarily intended to help you lose weight. As a recent study shows, reduced food intake can have even more health benefits.
When you create a calorie deficit in your diet, your goal is most likely to reduce your body fat percentage and thereby lose weight.
As a recent study shows, however, reducing energy intake can help get rid of love handles. Instead, overall health can benefit from this lifestyle.
Reducing Calories Improves Health
American researchers came to this conclusion after monitoring 218 healthy adults between 21 and 50 for two years.
Subjects were randomly assigned to remain on their usual diet for the duration of the trial or to reduce their calorie intake by 25 percent.
25 percent can be around 500 calories for an adult. Therefore, most of the participants only managed to save an average of 12 percent, i.e., about 300 calories, per day.
A deficit that led to significant positive changes in the state of health of the test persons. It should be noted that at the beginning of the study, all subjects were quite fit or at most slightly overweight.
Healthier And Slimmer Thanks To A Calorie Deficit
The results, published in the journal ‘ Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, ‘are unequivocal: the subjects on the calorie-restricted diet enjoyed better health after two years.
They had lower blood pressure, reduced inflammation, and improved cholesterol and blood sugar levels. They also lost an average of 10 percent of their body weight, most of it fat.
Positive Effects On The Organism
“We weren’t surprised that there were changes,” said William Kraus, lead author of the study and professor of medicine and cardiology
“But the magnitude was quite amazing.” Not even five drugs in combination could bring about these positive health effects.
The study suggests that restricting calorie intake could prevent disease. However, further studies need to be carried out to understand the relationships better.
Challenging To Reduce Calorie Intake
Despite this positive news, the study also shows how difficult it can be to reduce calorie intake over the long term drastically.
Because even though the subjects attended cooking classes on how to prepare low-calorie meals and were in regular contact with nutritionists, they could not even achieve half of the goal, a reduction of 25 percent.
Nevertheless, this study showed that a 12 percent reduction in calorie intake could positively impact various risk factors for heart disease and diabetes, which are particularly favored by obesity.
Almost every second German is now overweight shows how important a healthy and balanced diet is.
Also Read: 7 Surprising Things That Burn Calories