New Study: Cutting calories key to weight loss...is the study accurate?

The following story or should I say so called study infuriates me. While anyone can lose pounds reducing caloric intake, it is short lived, unhealthy and not sustainable. Dieticians unfortunately subscribe to the above thought process. There are valuable components missing in the "let's lose weight" mentality. While one is succesfully shedding pounds, one should also be properly nourished with Essential Fatty Acids, quality protein sources and phytonutrients from fresh vegetables and fruit. The best diet consists of nutrient dense food choices and supplementation based on biochemical individuality. Polyunsaturates are abused while being touted as heart healthy, and actually contribute to heart disease, red meat is discouraged when grass fed beef should be highly valued, and saturated fats are limited when our cells are lined with a phopholipid layer of 50% saturated fat! There is a huge disconnect in the dietician's recommendations. We need to be nourished not just fed!

By AFP - Thu Feb 26, 8:42 AM PST- Eating heart-healthy, low-calorie foods and exercising is the key to losing weight regardless of levels of protein, fat or carbohydrates, a new study has found.

Overweight patients cast a shadow at a weight reduction clinic. A new study has found that eating heart-healthy, low-calorie foods and exercising is the key to losing weight regardless of levels of protein, fat or carbohydrates.(AFP/File/Frederic J. Brown)

The research, funded by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) of the National Institutes of Health, seems to argue against blanket use of diets that do not necessarily limit calories but call for eating certain foods such as vegetables or proteins, at the expense of others.
The NIH study of 811 volunteers, 38 percent of them men and 62 percent women, aged 30-70 and either overweight or obese, looked at diets that have been popular in the United States in recent years, even as the number of obese Americans has soared.

The "Preventing Overweight Using Novel Dietary Strategies (POUNDS LOST) study found similar weight loss after six months and two years among participants assigned to four diets that differed in their proportions of these three major nutrients," said researchers.
"The diets were low or high in total fat (20 or 40 percent of calories) with average or high protein (15 or 25 percent of calories). Carbohydrate content ranged from 35 to 65 percent of calories.

"The diets all used the same calorie reduction goals and were heart-healthy low in saturated fat and cholesterol while high in dietary fibre," said researchers, whose study is published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Participants lost an average 13 pounds (5.9 kilos) at six months and maintained a nine-pound (four-kilo) loss at two years.

"These results show that, as long as people follow a heart-healthy, reduced-calorie diet, there is more than one nutritional approach to achieving and maintaining a healthy weight," said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, director at NHLBI.

"This provides people who need to lose weight with the flexibility to choose an approach that they're most likely to sustain: one that is most suited to their personal preferences and health needs," she stressed.

Sixty-six percent of US adults are overweight and of those, 32 percent are obese, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show