Last week you read about a study that found formerly obese teens who successfully lost more than 30 pounds and kept off the weight for more than one year shared the same mindset. Their motivation for creating such a dramatic weight loss wasn't the desire to look better, the need to improve social status, or the hope of getting mom and dad to stop nagging.

For most, the desire came from a yearning I dare say more than a few readers share, one that so often gets squelched by the insane speed at which we live our lives: the hunger for better health.While it's hard to create a column to create that craving, I can try. And I certainly can remind you that the early summer is a fine time to make lifestyle changes because it's a transition period. And any transition period is, as Chad Jensen, a psychologist at Brigham Young University, said in response to the aforementioned study, "an opportunity to remake yourself."An editorial review published online on April 23, 2015 by the British Journal of Sports Medicine and discussed next can certainly help that remake by suggesting how to redo your diet.The back story: For decades, most experts believed weight loss was best achieved by becoming more physically active while you improved the quality of your diet and cut back moderately on calories (about 250 fewer per day). While I believe that prescription is still sound, the aforementioned editorial review assigns priority to those three components that improves the process. The argument offered by Dr. Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist and consultant to the Academy of Medicine Royal Colleges in London, along with a host of colleagues is summed up with this line: being obese or simply overweight "cannot be outrun by exercise."The editorial claims that the real culprit to the recent boom in obesity is not a lack of physical activity but the surfeit of sugar and simple carbs in our diets. The strength of that claim comes from the fact that the amount of exercise and overall physical activity performed in the western world has changed little during the last three decades, yet the rate of obesity has increased alarmingly.Furthermore, the editorial review claims that poor diet does far more than affect body shape. The real problem with the surfeit of sugar and simple carbs in our diets is that it "generates more disease than physical inactivity, alcohol [abuse], and smoking combined."As ammunition for this assertion, the review cites a prior review of metabolic syndrome, often the harbinger of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Surprisingly, this review published in 2013 found that many people with metabolic syndrome do not have what was once seen as its key precursor: excessive body weight.In fact, up to 40 percent of the subjects who had metabolic syndrome in those studies cited also had a healthy body weight, according to body mass index.So how does the British Journal of Sports Medicine review aid you if you've decided to start an early-summer makeover? By reinforcing that exercise while essential for optimal health can not be the sole strategy employed when attempting to strip away unwanted pounds.Diet counts. Big time.So much so that the review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine stresses that even the intense sort of exercise done by elite athletes cannot offset the damage done by a bad diet.The editorial review is far from being anti-exercise, however, since it also emphasizes that exercise of and by itself can help your health in other ways. When done regularly and properly "[exercise] reduces the risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, dementia and some cancers by at least 30 percent."An especially refreshing element to the editorial review comes from the acceptance of a previously suspect dietary theory. Until recently, the mainstream medical community has believed that "a calorie is a calorie," or, in essence, that for weight gain or weight maintenance, all calories are equal.Only a few free-thinking individuals followed the philosophy that some call nutrient partitioning, the belief that it's not necessarily how many calories you eat but how many grams of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats you ingest that determines weight loss or weight gain.Yet in this editorial review published in what would surely be considered a mainstream publication, the reviewers concede: "It is where calories come from that is crucial. Sugar calories promote fat storage and hunger."So if you've been eating in a manner similar to most Americans and begin an early-summer health makeover, cutback your consumption of simple carbs, the type you get when you eat primarily processed food and drink soda, sweetened tea and coffee and fruit juice.While this advice is worth expressing, I'd hardly call it news. I've been a proponent of nutrient partitioning for years. Additionally, in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans guidelines produced by the mainstream medical community it states that the reduction of added sugars needed to be a primary goal for those striving for optimal health.