Why Diets Don't Work

Diets offer short term solutions to long term problems

Diets usually only offer a short term solution to a weight problem. If you lose weight by dieting there is a 95% chance you will regain any weight loss within 5 years. Why? Being over weight is a product of well established patterns of behavour. This behavour needs to be changed. Healthier habits and lifestyle changes need to be adopted. Dieting is really just a temporary substitution of food or worse, a reduction of intact. This opens the door to a "diet-binge cycle".

The Diet - Binge Cycle

If you choose to deny your body the food it craves there is always the possibility that your self-control will collapse. Like a dam busting, the resulting binge carnage can be extremely damaging:

"A binge is defined as eating an amount of food that is clearly larger than what most persons would eat in a similar situation with the same amount of time, and a sense that one cannot stop eating or control content or quantity of food intake. The Binge phase is characterized by thoughts and feelings such as "I am out of control" "I have no will power", "I am disgusting", "I feel shame and self-loathing."

N.B.C. - The Biggest Loser

I have no energy

Your body may react to a reduction in calories by slowing your metabolism. Not only does this make it harder to lose weight but may also lead to a mild form of depression from a feeling of lack of energy and reluctance to partake in social and physical activity.

 

Fad / Starvation Diets are the worst of the worst

Fad and starvation diets are the creme-de-la-creme of lousy eating. Firstly, why do you want risk your health by adopting an extremely unbalanced or deficient diet? What do you think is likely to happen when you have completed your diet? You have left yourself with two fundamental choices. Go on another diet or go back to previous eating habits. This is the beginning of "yo-yo dieting,"

"This kind of diet is associated with extreme food deprivation as a substitute for good diet and exercise techniques. As a result, the dieter may experience loss of both muscle and body fat during the initial weight-loss phase (weight-bearing exercise is required to maintain muscle). After completing the diet, the dieter is likely to experience the body's famine response, leading to rapid weight gain of only fat. This is a cycle that changes the body's fat-to-muscle ratio, one of the more important factors in health. One study in rats showed those made to yo-yo diet were more efficient at gaining weight."

Yo-Yo Effect - Wikipedia

Tasty Diet?

It even sounds odd to have tasty and diet in the same sentence. Many claims are made but if diets were truly delicious then nobody would be fat in the first place. The sad fact is food containing lots of fat often tastes good. Just ask anyone who eats lots of junk food. Restrictive diets rarely, if ever, match up. When it comes to taste, its Fat 1 - Diet 0.

Magic Diets

If you are feeling brave, have a look in your spam folder and you are bound to find some email advertising a magic or miracle fat losing something or other as part of a wonder diet. It might be pills, powders, special herbs, could be anything, which is the point, it could be anything, don't risk your health.

The old breakfast cereal "con"

The other point (if you like taking risks with your health that is) is the likely claim is that the diet product will only be effective "if used as part of a healthy diet and regular exercise program" This is akin to how advertisers used to advertise breakfast cereals whilst exulting the benefits of the milk you were suppose add to them. In this case, it is likely to be the healthy eating and exercise that will work, magic is for small children.

It is easy to be negative - how do I lose weight if I don't go on a diet?

Well, I'm glad you asked that question but my guess is you already know the answer. Healthy eating and exercise will do the job. Of course that's a lot easier to say than do. That's why there is a fat100.com to help. We don't expect all our suggestions will work for you but there is 100 to choose from so there should be something that will.

More Fat Information

Dietary Guideline From Australian Government

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