Why Diets Don’t Work

Does this sound familiar? You hear about this wonderful diet that guarantees weight loss, so you try it, only to gain even more weight back once you’ve lost it? Or nothing happens at all?

Don’t feel bad, you are not alone. Just because a diet works for one person doesn’t mean it will work for you. Diets are pretty much destined to fail, and it should come as no surprise. After all, the word “die” is within the word “diet”. That should be your first sign. You want to live your life!

Here are the top 5 reasons that diets are doomed to fail:

1. People choose to use a diet to achieve a short-term goal.

That goal is usually to lose weight before an upcoming event. Diets are perceived from the onset as a temporary action used to obtain an immediate result. Once that result is achieved, the diet is stopped and old eating habits return along with the weight. Which leads to my next point:

2. Yo-yo dieting or weight cycling is very common.

As mentioned, many people go on diets, lose weight, and then gain it back, often more than they lost. And for some reason, the cycle is repeated. To quote Albert Einstein: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” This repeated failure can have negative effects not only on a person’s physical health, but also on a person’s mental health as well, and could even result in an eating disorder.

3. Many diets are based on the premise of counting calories using a formula meant for the general population as opposed to the individual.

First of all, everyone processes calories differently. This formula supports the theory that caloric expenditure exceeds caloric intake and will, therefore, promote weight loss. It has become clear that this premise is no longer true. Every low-calorie food is not created equal. Calories consumed from spinach or sweet potatoes are much more nutrient-dense than calories consumed from a processed, low-fat muffin. The toxins and additives in the muffin will definitely slow weight loss. In addition, if you consume too few calories without knowing how to do it right, your body may go into survival mode, slowing down the metabolism. Then you may run the risk of your metabolism remaining sluggish once you start consuming more calories.

4. Before even starting a diet, people believe that they will be depriving themselves of foods they love.

Entering into a program with this mindset clearly does not support success. This constant experience of deprivation (or even the thought of it) can result in not starting the diet at all (commonly known as avoidance) or at the very least, the dieter can experience food cravings that will be difficult to ignore. Support is needed along the way when starting to eat clean and healthy.

5. Many diets don’t address food cravings and how to handle them.

Everyone has cravings. Having the tools to help navigate through those cravings and reach for healthy food alternatives will help to eliminate them. I’m finding more and more that there’s a healthy substitute for almost ANYTHING!

Unfortunately for many individuals, diets only offer a quick fix to a larger problem – poor gut health, an unbalanced blood sugar resulting in inflammation (shall we say puffiness?) and a compromised immune system. Learning which foods nourish the body and which don’t is the best approach to eating in order to obtain weight loss in a healthy way. In reality, weight loss is one of the many “symptoms” of better health, much like good sleep, mood, and energy.