Why Diets Don’t Work

It’s almost the new year and with that come New Year’s Resolutions. The majority of resolutions revolve around dieting and weight loss. This makes sense as January is National Dieting month. I’m sure you are being bombarded with dieting ads promising a better life in a smaller body, but I am here to explain why diets don’t work and why diet culture is so problematic.

The diet industry in the United states makes roughly $70 billion a year. Wow! The industry profits off of our desire to be accepted based on the size of our bodies. It’s so easy to fall into that trap. It’s so alluring and clearly, the marketing works. However, research shows that 90-95% of diets don’t work. What do I mean by this? The statistic indicates that people that commit to dieting to lose weight will regain the weight back within a few years. So as a long-term weight loss solution, diets fail us and more importantly are flawed. 

Even knowing this statistic in how diets don’t work, we continue to believe that we are the problem. We question and blame our will power, rather than questioning and blaming the diet promised to give a better life. 

If you still need some persuasion on why I don’t approve of diets of weight loss and why they truly don’t work, follow along. 

All-Or-Nothing Mentality

My first reason for why diets don’t work is that they rely on the all or nothing mentality. Often times many dieters feel like failures when they give into a craving that is not “recommended” on their diet. Negative thoughts about how your lack of willpower sucks starts to occur and the self berating begins. These negative thoughts and feelings then lead to the “what the hell” mentality. Which is when you believe you have ruined your diet so you think, “What the heck, I might as well eat whatever I want.” Which typically leads to a binge eating episode. Sound familiar? I have participated in this mentality way too many times to count. 

But how many times in life are we actually perfect? Exactly! Life happens and having unrealistic expectations that you won’t ever eat anything off of your diet sets you up for failure. Having the freedom to “go with the flow” when life is thrown in your face, especially when it comes to food helps to limit the binge eating episodes as this behavior, if consistent enough, falls into the eating disorder category and it continues to perpetuate an unhealthy relationship with food. 

Dieting Leads to Starvation

If you have read any of my other blogs, I write all the time about how amazing the body is. The body knows how to keep us alive. It is wired for survival. Just as you have heard the whole fight or flight response, the body engages that response when it is in perceived famine. When we diet, our bodies believe a famine is happening right now and immediately goes into survival mode. Physiologically, our bodies prepare for survival by lowering our metabolism, by retaining fat, by focusing on food and when we can/will eat next, and by shutting down non-survival systems such as reproduction. Ever heard of a woman losing their period because they were under-eating and malnourished? This is why! 

This threat of restriction wrecks more havoc on our bodies than we know. After years or decades of dieting, no wonder why it is so hard for people to break up with dieting! Your body could be accustomed to these damaging cycles. Your body is not the problem or the enemy in this scenario. Dieting and diet culture is the culprit! If there was a diet that truly worked, wouldn’t the whole diet industry go under overnight?! 

The Forbidden Fruit Mentality

There was a research study conducted on “Suppressing the White Bears.” In this experiment, participants were asked to not think of white polar bears for five minutes and anytime a white polar bear popped into their mind they were asked to ring a bell. It was found on average that almost every participant thought of the polar bear at least one time per minute. This study founded evidence that when we try not to think about something one part of our brain will put it in a “forbidden” category while the other part of our brain “checks in” to make sure we are not thinking about the forbidden topic only to bring that topic to mind. 

Now apply this research to your own brain with dieting. The more and more we restrict foods and participate in diets that forbid certain foods or food groups, causes our cravings for that food to begin and consistently intensify. We become hyper aware of the foods we are limiting and crave them even more. Once again, we are human and are not perfect humans at that, so naturally we will break the diet and eat forbidden foods. As mentioned above, restricting could then lead to bingeing. It doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person. It doesn’t mean you don’t have willpower, but in the end, is having a forbidden fruit mentality really a healthy lifestyle that benefits your mental and physical health?

To prevent this mentality, I encourage my clients to participate in habituation with their forbidden foods. What does that mean? Habituation is a “form of repeated exposure to food, leading to a decrease in response (eating). This explains why leftovers or meal prepping becomes less appealing with time. This also explains why you won’t strictly eat donuts and pizza for the rest of your life. Allowing habituation when it comes to foods helps remove those forbidden foods from their pedestal and gives you the chance to eat these foods when you desire without guilt or shame. 

Instead of starting up a new, trendy diet this January, practice giving yourself unconditional permission to eat what you want. 
This may seem intimidating and I was right there with you! But the reason this seems so daunting is because restriction causes you to feel so out of control when it comes to food. Allowing yourself to eat those foods that have been restricted for so long, gives you back the power that food once had over you. Going down this path isn’t easy. It takes trial and error, but once you make it on the other side. It is so rewarding! 

Your ability to diet has nothing to do with willpower but everything to do with how diets set you up to fail.