A Massive New Harvard Study Shows Which Diet Burns the Most Calories. Here's Why It'll Change Everything You Know About Losing Weight

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Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek. 

If you're going to lose weight, you have to cut outsomething.

Each diet you try has a focus on one particular thing. This makes it easier to market, of course.

Scientists at Harvard, however, thought they'd look to see whether the reduction of one thing might burn more calories than the reduction of another.

Specifically, well, their exciting title in the British Medical Journal says it all: Effects of a low carbohydrate diet on energy expenditure during weight loss maintenance: randomized trial.

Does removing carbs from your diet help you burn more calories? Or does removing fat have a greater effect?

Well, they found that those struggling with their weight who went on a high-carb, low fat diet burned far fewer calories than those who replaced their carbs with fat.

I can't imagine that this study will create sudden agreement among everyone in the diet industry.

There's too much money at stake, after all.

It does, however, begin to suggest that every calorie isn't the same. Which could eliminate the effectiveness of calorie-counting as a sure way to calculate weight-loss potential.

This study may have a great influence, though, because it was extensive. The researchers monitored 164 adults and made sure of their precise food intake over 20 weeks.

It almost seems like scientists are now devolving into two camps: those that believe the greatest evil is carbs -- menaces such as pasta and white bread -- and those who still conclude that fats are the even greater evil.

Yet if this study leads to a consideration that calories from different sources have different effects on the human body, humans may have to make detailed daily choices in the hope of losing even a few pounds.