What if dieting makes you fatter? - By Sydney Spiesel - Slate Magazine

What if dieting makes you fatter? - By Sydney Spiesel - Slate Magazine: "medical examiner: Health and medicine explained.
Beware of DietWhat if counting calories makes you fatter in the long run?
By Sydney Spiesel
Posted Wednesday, July 4, 2007, at 8:25 AM ET

Diets have a high failure rate
Do diets work? The great majority of doctors think so. Experience tells us to expect an enormous failure rate, yet most of us continue to hold out hope that the diets we prescribe will result in lost weight or other health benefits. Why do we keep believing? First of all, because dieting really ought to work—here's the standard explanation. Calories are energy. The body stores excess energy (beyond what we need for motion and the chemical processes of life) in fat. If we cut down our caloric intake (or increase our energy output) below the amount of energy the body uses, our weight will fall."