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Oct. 6, 2006 -- A third of college women polled at a large university have dieted, compared with a fifth of college men, and many aren't too thrilled with the results.
That news appears in the October edition of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.
The study comes from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Sarah Davy, who recently graduated with a BS degree, led the project.
Her colleagues included Judy A. Driskell, PhD, RD, professor of nutritionnutrition and health sciences at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.
Driskell tells WebMD about five tips she would give college students who want to diet:
About the Study
The researchers gave dieting questionnaires to 105 male and 181 female undergraduates in an introductory class on nutrition.
The class counts toward the university's requirement to take at least one science class and likely represents other students at the university, Driskell notes.
The students reported their height, weight, current and past diets, and satisfaction with their diets.
Most weren't overweight, based on their BMI (body mass index):
Few students -- 13% -- said they were currently dieting.
About a third of the women said they had ever dieted, compared with about a fifth of the men.
Women were more likely than men to have tried Weight Watchers, low-fat diets, and low-carbohydrate diets.
Women were also more likely to have tried vegetarian diets. But the study doesn't show whether they had tried vegetarian diets for weight loss or for other reasons.
Dissatisfied With Dieting
"Only 17% of participants were pleased with the diets tried," the researchers write.
"These are college students and many of them have tried different kinds of diets," Driskell tells WebMD.
"I think it is of importance that, generally, they were not satisfied with the results of their dieting and that more of the females than the males had tried the different types of diets," Driskell says.
The study doesn't show why the students were dissatisfied with their dieting experiences.
When it comes to weight loss, "women tend to use the diet approach; men use the exercise approach," Driskell says, citing other studies.
"The best approach is a combination of both," Driskell says, referring to exercise and a healthy diet.
Other research has also shown that "body image is of more importance to females than it is to males," Driskell says, with society putting more pressure about body image on women.
SOURCES: Davy, S. Journal of the American Dietetic Association, October 2006; vol 106: pp 1673-1677. Judy A. Driskell, PhD, RD, professor of nutrition and health sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln.