Study: Eat more turkey and less carbs

LOS ANGELES (AP) - More turkey, less white bread and mashed potatoes.

Just in time for holiday feasting, a large study found that diets higher in protein and lower in carbohydrates can help overweight adults who managed to drop some weight keep it off.

As every yo-yo dieter knows, the real struggle isn't so much shedding pounds, but keeping them off. Past research has shown that as long as you burn more calories than you eat, you can slim down in the short term no matter what diet you try. Fewer studies have looked at ways to avoid packing it back on.

European researchers led by Denmark's University of Copenhagen think they have a solution to break the cycle.

Diets rich in lean meats, poultry and beans, and low in starchy carbs appear "to be the ideal for the prevention of weight regain," they wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study involved 773 overweight adults with families from eight European countries.