Live webchat with BBC What's The Right Diet For You? presenter Professor Susan Jebb OBE Tuesday 13 January from 2 to 3pm

[TraceyEMumsnet]

According to the BBC 11 million of us are on a diet in Britain today, yet the vast majority will fail. So what's the best way to lose weight successfully - and keep it off?

What's The Right Diet For You?, a 3-part Horizon special on BBC Two airing this week, will investigate how differences in our biochemistry, psychology and genes may affect our weight.

The programme follows 75 overweight volunteers from across the UK, who will be put on personalised diets to explore three possible causes of overeating: genes; gut hormones; and emotion-related eating. The experiment is led by a team of world-class scientists, one of whom will be joining us tomorrow for a webchat.

Susan Jebb OBE is Professor of Diet and Population Health at Oxford University. She is a nutrition scientist with 25 years' experience of research on preventing and treating obesity and diet-related ill health.

Can science succeed where other diets have failed? Interested in science tips and general weight loss advice? Put your questions to Professor Susan Jebb on Tuesday 13 January between 2 and 3pm, or post your questions in advance on this thread.

You can find out more about the programme here.

I have just done your customised dieting test online and have come out with roughly the same score for each type of eater! 33, 33, 34, I know it doesn't add to 100 but it must round up/down.
So what should I do? a bit of each? The one that has the half mark higher?

PS I am a 'seasoned' dieter - I have tried them all, including the fasting diet most recently.
I know your group did very well but most 'supervised' groups for these sorts of studies do well because there is a lot at stake. I think you make it sound much easier than it actually is to pigeon hold people.
I would be surprised if I was the only one that sits in the middle of the types.

• hole!

I am obese, my BMI is stupidly high and I have tried every diet and every support known yet relapsed time after time leading to a weight gain each time. I would love better support and more accurate, definitive dietary advice but am not sure how we know who we can trust.

Many diet groups have vested interests in processed foods (Weight Watchers and Atkins spring to mind) and many advisors and experts, yourself included, have links to food and weight loss groups. I know funding has to come from somewhere but my question is:
How do we know who we can trust and who is representing the interests of companies paying them?

I'm 157cm and since being fully grown (!!!) I've always been around 70 -75 kgs. My so called ideal weight is supposed to be 53- 63 kg. I did once after 2 1/2 years my last child get down to 63kg but I was eating mouses portions and dizzy all the time. I have IBS which restricts my diet. I run once a week, I cycle daily and swim for an hour each week. Any ideas?

165cm 71kg - according to BMI charts I need to lose up to 5kg (best part of a stone) But I'm a size 12, fit (exercise at least 4-5 times a week) and a GP friend told me not to lose weight as I would "look old". So do I? Don't I? I've (personally) found the only way that works for me is to eat less and move more. Is this one you approve of?

I think there must be a huge overlap between each group. Its nonsense to suggest they are different types of people. My marks were evenly split between all 3. I did a similar quiz in an NLP book and that at least acknowledged you could have more than one trait. Sadly it didn't give you a program to follow if you were evenly split.

I've tried low carb (worked brilliantly first time then 3 years later barely shifted anything) I tried 5:2 but overate on the normal days.

Don't you rate exercise/movement as important? Or just what we put in our mouths?

I lost 5 stone low carbing... I'm halfway through losing 2 more and m low carbing...all with a bit of paleo style thrown in

I pretty much have to rely on ready meals as I am severely disabled and carers aren't with me long enough to prepare food from scratch. How can I lose weight? (exercise is also difficult).

Snowy I don't know if this will help or not but my brother and his partner lost a lot by switching totally to the M&S diet and fuller longer stuff. They don't have disabilities but both worked long and irregular hours. It worked for them and they said it didn't cost more as they saved on waste

There are quite a lot of healthy imaginative low cal "ready meals" out there Snowy. Innocent veg pots for example, loads of brands of fresh soup, M&S Fuller Longer range - there's quite a lot of them. There's no reason why a diet can't be acceptably healthy despite being based on pre-prepared food if that's what you need to eat. It may not be a cheap option though.

My results suggested I was a constant craver and should adopt intermittent fasting. However, I tried IF for a year and it did not work for me at all. (Unlike when I opted for a low-fat/high GI diet where I solidly lost 2lbs per week).

However, my question is:

considering there does not seem to be much research into the effects of IF on women (including any impact on fertility or/and suitability for women at different stages of their menstrual cycle and/or during the menopause) is it responsible to recommend it as a way of eating (particularly when the earlier Horizon programme on IF did not really focus much on the mediterranean diet which had formed the basis of the IF/breast cancer trials)?

My results were Constant Craver yet I have struggled to lose weight on a 5:2 regime. The only diet I ever lost weight on and kept it off with is low carbing, but after having DD I've never been able to get back on and keep it up for more than a few weeks.

There didn't seem to be an answer in the questionnaire for what is my worst problem, which is eating when I'm bored. I'm not an emotional eater at all, and if I'm busy, I hardly ever think about food - yet if I've got nothing to do I suddenly want to eat ALL the food! Is there a type for that...?

I'm same as Lovecat but did loose 21lb on 5:2.

I kept it off but still struggle with boredom eating.

I'm a constant craver. It makes sense to me, but I'm still getting my head around how to make this work better. My main difficulty is I also have a child with an eating disorder, and very low weight (one of the reasons why food is constantly on my mind).
Id love to see experts in eating disorders and weight loss to do similar research to help categorise weight loss patterns, and help people with very low weight to.put weight on.

My question is, do you have advice for families comprising people with very different dietary needs, on managing to ensure a healthy diet for each individual, when we should not all be eating the same. (Especially when the adults are trying to lose weight and the children need to put weight on)?

I'm an emotional eater which I had recognised before doing the online test. I diet effectively by combining slimming world with my gym which often leads to big losses then a short period of stability before I pile it all back on again. How do I get off the roller coaster? I was impaired glucose tolerant during pregnancy so I'm at massive risk of diabetes. But still I can't focus and get the weight off. Now my job depends on it with yearly fitness tests. How can I get my brain to switch off the desire for food whilst I change my usual eating habits. The first week is just awful and sooooo depressing. Plus I swear slimming clubs just make you fat

I have been insulin dependent diabetic for 3 years and have put on a considerable amount of weight in this time. My diabetic consultant has told me it is hard to lose weight because of how the insulin converts in the body. I don't really understand this to be honest. My highest score was constant craver but had high feaster as well. Would you recommend IF for a diabetic? I think I would feel dizzy on the low calorie days - am prone to this anyway.

Did the 5:2ers on the show have 2 consecutive low calorie days?

I'm also sceptical re the science of separating the different groups. There doesn't seem to be a control group. The mere fact of being on a weight loss programme on national TV must be quite motivating to lose weight, whichever diet you choose. All the groups are going to get quite a lot of emotional support and encouragement, just by being on the programme.

Also, it is relatively much easier to lose weight short term, but very hard to keep it off. My hunch would be that whatever the notional rationale for losing weight, the vast majority will lose a decent amount of weight - but almost everyone will put it all back on in the next year or 2.

I don't seem to fit into any of those categories!

The IF dieters on the show were told to eat 800 calories a day but low carb at the same time. This is different to the "standard" 5:2 advice of 500 calories for women a day on fast days. What is the reasoning behind this please?

If I skip a meal, or eat later than usual, I get horrific migrainous headaches. I then try to cure said headaches by eating. It doesn't work. Does this fit with 'constant craver' picture, which was my result on the test? There is no way I could eat 800 kcal twice a week without getting headaches. Plus I'm not convinced by the genetic argument... Neither parent is overweight. Both my brother and I are bordering on obese, although he is well built and very fit. I am a less fit, but muscular size 16 with a fat tummy. So I have about 15 kilos to lose.

Hello,

I was interested in the 5:2 recommended diet for the 'Constant Cravers' (me!)

I have done the 5:2 in the past and found it to be good for me as it taught me that I don't have to be eating all the time. The intermittent fasting that your diet recommended had no carbs for people but more calories (800 instead of 500). Can you explain the thinking behind this please?

Thanks, I really enjoyed the programme.