Why diets do not work on lipedema

Why diets do not work on lipedema

Here is the most important sentence on this page: "lack of response to diet" is a diagnostic criterion for lipedema.

In other words, the fact that your legs do not change when you lose weight is not a failure. It is one of the signs used to recognise the disease.

What that means in practice

Lipedema fat does not behave like ordinary fat. It resists weight loss. A woman can lose ten kilos, watch them go from her face, her belly and her chest, and find exactly the same legs.

That is why lipedema is so often taken for obesity, and why so many women are told to make an effort. One measured detail confirms it: insulin resistance is three times less common in lipedema than in lifestyle-related obesity, 11.3% against 34.5%. These are not the same mechanisms.

What research has studied

Low-carbohydrate diets, of the ketogenic type, are the best documented. A pooled analysis of seven studies covering 329 women shows falls in weight and body mass index, and one study reports an improvement in pain and quality of life.

The rest has to be said too: these are observational studies, the quality of the evidence is low, and some guidelines do not retain them, precisely because the results contradict each other.

What is not known

• Whether a diet acts on pain other than by causing weight loss in general.
• Which foods would make things worse or better. No food list exists in the scientific literature. If you come across one, it was invented.
• Food supplements: no study, no review. Nothing at all.

Before changing anything

Two women in three with lipedema screen positive for signs of disordered eating. It is the highest figure in the whole literature on this disease, and it makes sense: twenty years of diets that do not work leaves a mark.

If eating is a difficult subject for you, talk to a professional before undertaking a change in your diet.

Lovae recommends no diet. This page reports what research has shown, and what it has not.