Research
Energy balance
The magnitude of weight loss on a low-fat diet is positively correlated with initial body weight and the percentage reduction in dietary fat.
If you are overweight, lowering your fat intake will result in more weight loss than if you were normal weight. Specifically, for every 1% you reduce the percentage of calories from fat, you can expect to lose an additional 0.37 kg over the study period.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Weight loss was positively and independently related to pre-treatment body weight (r = 0.52, P < 0.05) and to reduction in the percentage of energy as fat (0.37 kg / %, P < 0.005)... Extrapolated to a BMI of about 30 kg/m 2 and assuming a 10 % reduction in dietary fat, the predicted weight loss would be 4.4 kg (95 % CI, 2.0 to 6.8 kg).
Why this rating
Derived from the same robust meta-analysis, showing clear dose-response relationships.
Source
The role of dietary fat in body fatness: evidence from a preliminary meta-analysis of ad libitum low-fat dietary intervention studies
Arne Astrup et al. · British Journal Of Nutrition · 2000
DOI 10.1017/s0007114500000921
Meta-analysis · 16 studiesCited 289×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Ad libitum low-fat diets produce a statistically significant, dose-dependent weight loss in overweight individuals without requiring active energy restriction.Good
- Replacing fat with complex carbohydrates (vegetables, fruits, whole grains) in a low-fat diet improves cardiovascular risk factors and satiety compared to replacing fat with simple sugars.Moderate
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