The Truth about Diets...

Ever comitted to a new diet plan that initially inspired hope that you would achieve your transformation goals and set yourself on a path to better health and more happiness, to then realise that the diet itself is a bunch of baloney? Well, if you have then you certainly aren't alone.

For anyone that has ever considered going on a diet, the first obstacle of actually deciding which diet to go for can be very overwhelming, because of the sheer number of diets that all claim to be game changers when it comes to weight loss. However, the fact of the matter is that most of these life changing diets are actually not all that different from many of the politicians we see on TV; they all claim to be something that they’re not. For the people that diets are actually most relevant to, dieting might not actually be the most effective way of achieving the end goal of losing weight, and may do more harm than good, especially if long term weight loss is the driver.

There is a lot of scientific evidence out there to suggest that cutting calories simply doesn’t lead to long term weight loss or health gains. Despite this, diets continue to attract support as the only solution to the problem of long term weight loss. To illustrate the problems associated with dieting, let’s consider Nicky. Nicky is naturally thin and believes that this is down to her eating habits when in actuality, it’s her genes that are responsible. Those that aren’t quite as fortunate as Nicky wouldn’t be as lean as her, even if they ate the same foods in the same quantities. Their bodies are able to run on fewer calories which sounds like a good thing right? However, this means that after eating the same foods and using that energy to run their bodies, they have more calories left over to store as fat. So, to actually lose weight they would have to eat less food than Nicky and then, after dieting for a while, their metabolism changes such that they need to eat even less to keep losing weight.

On top of this, dieting causes neurological changes that make you more likely to notice food than before dieting, and once you notice it, these changes make it hard to stop thinking about it! Nicky might forget about those chocolate brownies on her colleague’s desk, but dieters won’t. In fact, dieters begin liking these foods more because other diet induced neurological changes make food not only taste better, but also cause food to give a bigger rush of the reward hormone dopamine. That’s the same hormone that’s released when addicts use their drug of choice. There are yet more uphill battles that dieters face due to hormonal changes brought about by dieting. Levels of the so called satiety hormone leptin reduce when dieting, meaning that it now takes even more food than before to feel full.

When you take the above into consideration, it’s easy to see why dieters usually regain the weight they initially lost through their New Year’s resolution diet, and we have the following suggestions for when or if that happens. If you do find yourself in this situation, it’s important to remember that this isn’t necessarily a fail because of you were in an unfair fight to begin with that very few actually win! Changing your focus to improving your health with regular exercise might actually be a more effective solution and it might be worth picking a different New Year’s resolution next time around!