Brain-bending points calculations are a big no-no if you want to stick to your diet, according to a new study that suggests simpler is better when it comes to dieting.

The finding comes from a study of 390 German women who were either given a simpler plan featuring shopping lists and a meal plan or a more complex plan involving assigning point values to each food and sticking to a daily limit.

According to Peter Todd, a professor of the department of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, for people on a complex diet, the perceived difficulty of the diet can lead them to give up on it.

And this is the case even after adjusting for self-efficacy, which is how much confidence people have in their ability to reach a goal such as sticking to a diet.

“Even if you think you can succeed, thinking that the diet is too cognitively complex can undermine your efforts,” the study's co-author, Jutta Mata, a psychology professor at Stanford University.

She suggested people considering going on a diet should look at different plans to check how complicated they are.

The study was published online in Appetite.