Contributor: “Dr. J”Dr. J offers his irreverent, slightly irrelevant, but possibly useful opinions on health and fitness. A Florida surgeon and fitness freak with a black belt in karate, he runs 50 miles a week and flies a Cherokee Arrow 200.
I have long been a fan of the keep it simple stupid (KISS) principle!
There is a reason, in surgery, that the words complicated and complication have the same root origin. I learned that lesson early on in my surgical career when called upon to repair a cheek fracture (ZMC)
for an inmate in our local prison system. He was a large, very muscular man, so I joked with him as I examined the injury, “I’d hate to see the guy who hit you!”
He then told me the story. It seems that while he was doing a bench press, someone with a grudge to settle came up over from behind him and punched him straight down in the face! He probably finished the set before finishing whoever hit him!
In the operating room, I had a decision to make. I could either do a simple intra-oral approach, which would have given a good result most of the time, or a more complicated external approach, which would give a good result almost all of the time. I chose the complicated approach. What could have been a 30-minute operation turned into four and a half hours of very challenging repairs! From that day on, I was a believer in KISS!
KISS and diet
Not surprisingly, successful dieters are believers in the KISS principle also. It seems that the perceived level of complexity of a diet plan’s rules and requirements will have a significant effect on how successful the plan will be for a person’s weight loss efforts.
Researchers from Indiana University and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin recently compared the dieting behavior of women following two different diet plans and found that the more complicated people thought their diet plan was, the sooner they were likely to abandon it.
“For people on a more complex diet that involves keeping track of quantities and items eaten, their feelings about the difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it,” reported Peter Todd, professor in Indiana’s Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.
Keep it simple, sister
The researchers recruited 390 women, already in the process of using one of the two diet plans, from Internet chat rooms dealing with weight management. The subjects answered questionnaires at the beginning, at four weeks, and at the end of an eight-week period.
The study (PDF) examined the effect of the complexity of two diet plans. Brigitte, the one that is simpler to learn and apply, is a popular German recipe diet that provides shopping lists for the dieters to follow with prescribed meal plans. The other, Weight Watchers, is more complicated, assigning point values to every food and instructing participants to eat only a certain number of points per day.
Discussion
Although most people think the major determinants of whether one will be successful at dieting are willpower and dedication, this research points out that the perceived complexity of a diet plan’s rules and requirements has a significant effect. From my point of view, the more concrete, practical applications that you can use in your attempt at weight control, the greater your chance of getting the results you want. Keeping it simple is practical.
It seems reasonable to believe that the longer people can adhere to their diet plan, with the added potential of making it a lifestyle change, the more successful they will be long-term with their weight loss and maintenance.
For people interested in following a diet plan, Jutta Mata, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, suggests they take a look at several diet plans considering how many rules the plans have and how many things need to be kept in mind to actually apply the plan.
“If they decide to go with a more complex diet, which could be more attractive because it allows more flexibility, they should evaluate how difficult they will find doing those calculations and monitoring their consumption,” she said. “If they find it very difficult, the likelihood that they will prematurely give up the diet is higher and they should try to find a different plan.”
Mata said this complexity, even with the belief that one is capable of achieving the goal of sticking to the diet regimen, will have a negative effect on the outcome.
“Even if you believe you can succeed, thinking that the diet is cognitively complex can undermine your efforts,” she said.
Finding a diet plan that you will stay with is key. There are so many factors that will influence your success. Along with other factors, if you are looking for what will work best for you, whether with surgery or dieting, keeping it simple is the best operation!
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Dr. J will see you now: Keep it Simple