Diets “work”… Until They Don’t        canstockphoto23187937

Any radical change with eating or exercise will result in weight loss – for a while.

Radical changes can be anything from cutting calories to clean eating to eliminating carbs to drinking shakes to taking supplements to hormone injections to body boot camps to commercial diet programs to surgery…the list is endless and the price paid is very high in cost and emotion.

I can’t even count how many times people have told me “Diet ‘X’ works, I’ve done it nine times!” If that (or any) diet REALLY worked, why would they have to do it nine times?

When I go through my patients’ dieting and weight history with them, it never fails that every time they went “On” a diet and lost weight, they went “Off” the diet and gained the weight back – and usually gained an additional 5-10 pounds each time.   For someone who has done Diet ‘X’ nine times, that means they are 45-90 pounds heavier than they were before they started dieting.

I also can’t count how many times people have tearfully said they wished they would have been able to see that they weren’t fat to begin with when they started dieting. Women, especially, regret all of the weight loss attempts that unknowingly result in dieting their way UP the scale, often to over 200 pounds.

Clever marketing has gotten people to believe that diets “work” because they lose weight. But, for any intervention to “work” it has to have long term results. Diets of any type simply do not. If they did, we would not have an obesity epidemic.

Deceptive marketing has gotten people to believe that “lifestyle changes” are the answer to weight loss. But, the lifestyle changes offered are nothing more than diets in disguise. And, with the same disappointing results.

Whatever the product, anything that promises fast, easy, fat burning, metabolism changing, long term weight loss does only one thing – it makes money for someone else. The only thing lost for good comes out of your bank account.

Our bodies cannot sustain diets because our physiology fights hard against starvation. We may think of dieting as ‘healthy,’ but our bodies only react to dieting as if we are starving. Our physiology will win every time – that’s why people go “Off” the diet and regain the weight, plus more.

It has nothing to do with willpower, wanting to be healthy or desiring a better body image. None of those things will ever override the body’s drive for survival. The body will only starve for so long before it forces us to eat. We regain all of the weight, plus more, because the body is preparing for another famine and it wants to make sure we will survive it.

Dieting Is Not The Answer

While the focus is put on controlling and losing weight, that’s not the actual problem. The problem is that dieting has become the expected cultural norm – something is ‘wrong’ if we’re not trying to lose weight — and we don’t know how to eat anymore.

If you want to stop gaining weight, you have to relearn how to eat! No diet will ever teach you that. You were born knowing when you were hungry and when you were full. You still have that intuitive knowledge. It’s just been silenced by the unending misinformation about nutrition and weight control that the multi-billion dollar diet industry enjoys at your expense.

As an eating disorder specialist for over 25 years, I have helped hundreds of people end the cycle of yo-yo dieting, stop their obsessions with food and weight and learn the skills that support true physical and emotional health.

If you’ve gotten to the end of this article, you’ve probably related to the information in it. Instead of starting another diet, start living a life where food is just food that can be enjoyed without guilt, fear or self-loathing. You deserve to have a normal relationship with food and your body.

Call or email me now for more information – I can help you!

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