Study finds pot smokers weigh less

The pot diet

By Sally Wadyka

It’s a scene that’s been played out in movies (and college dorm rooms) over and over again. You get high, get some junk food, and proceed to stuff your face till you pass out. But while stoner food fests are legendary, there’s a twist to the tale that may leave healthy eaters and frustrated dieters scratching their heads.

Turns out that in spite of the late-night pizza binges and countless bags of Doritos they consume, the average marijuana user is actually less likely to be obese than the general, non-pot-smoking public.

A team of researchers from three different institutions collaborated to assess subjects who had participated in the 2005 to 2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They asked over 4,600 men and women about their marijuana usage. Of the participants, 579 reported that they were current marijuana users and 1,975 admitted to inhaling in the past. All were tested for fasting insulin and glucose levels, insulin resistance, cholesterol levels and waist circumference.

Surprisingly, the researchers found that the current pot smokers had significantly smaller waist circumferences than those who had never touched the stuff. And even former users were likely to be more slender than their never-smoked counterparts. But beyond trimmer waistlines, the pot smokers shared some other healthy characteristics. As a group, they had higher levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good” kind), lower insulin levels and reduced insulin resistance (if your insulin resistance is high, it means you have trouble absorbing glucose from the bloodstream and are at higher risk for diabetes).

So now for the big question: How on earth can pot smoking -- which has been shown in previous studies to increase your caloric intake by over 600 extra calories per day—make you skinny?  The researchers still aren’t sure beyond hypothesizing that marijuana helps improve insulin control, which helps regulate weight. Figure out the answer, and you’ll win a large pepperoni pizza and a bag of Doritos.