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It's easy to assume that when you finally lose those excess pounds, life will change for the better. But dieting can in fact make you miserable and more at risk of depression, a study claims, according to the Daily Mail.

Researchers found that losing weight didn’t make people happy. Instead, those who successfully slimmed down were almost twice as likely to feel sad, lonely and lethargic than those who stayed the same weight or got fatter.

The large-scale research, at University College London, found that the advertising industry tells dieters their lives will be transformed when they are thinner.

They then feel disappointed when they discover little has changed other than their weight.

In addition, dieting itself can be difficult, which in turn can cause people to feel down.

The findings come from a study of almost 2,000 overweight and obese men and women aged 50 and over.

They were weighed at the start of the study and answered questions about how often they felt sad, lonely and listless.

Four years later, some 14 per cent of the volunteers had lost at least 5 per cent of their body weight – an amount known to improve health.

Tests showed their blood pressure and levels of harmful blood fats had dropped, however their mood was also lower.

Those who had lost weight were 78 per cent more likely to have symptoms of depression than those who hadn’t.

And importantly, the link could not be explained away by participants’ having fallen ill or suffered a bereavement or divorce during the intervening years, the journal PLOS ONE reported.