Losing weight on a diet only to gain it all back may be frustrating, but it beats doing nothing at all – that’s the finding of a Ohio University study.

Medical News Today reports the laboratory mice given a “yo-yo diet” – cycles of high-fat and low-fat meals, alternating every four weeks – during their average two-year lifespan lived about 25% longer and had better blood glucose levels than obese mice fed only high-fat foods. The yo-yo dieting group also live roughly as long as a control group of mice fed low-fat meals.

While keeping in mind that the study participants were, after all, rodents, the results do suggest that yo-yo dieting offer some benefits. This finding contradicts the opinion of some experts that losing and regaining weight repeatedly can be harmful to one’s health.

“If the conventional wisdom is true, it would discourage a lot of overweight people from losing weight,” said study lead author Edward List, a scientist at Ohio University’s Edison Biotechnology Institute. “The new research shows that the simple act of gaining and losing weight does not seem detrimental to lifespan.”