Diets Don't Work

Are you a professional involved in the treatment of eating disorders and interested in attending one of our meetings?

Click Here

Current Members :

Click Here

for the e-mail discussion group

Why diets don't work

Written by Deanne Jade, Principal of the National Centre of Eating Disorders

A visitor from a far-off planet observing the way we behave could easily assume that dieting is a very good idea indeed. We do it all the time. In fact, dieting is so popular that in the past 10 years it's estimated that around 70 per cent of the adult female population and 30 per cent of of all adult males (in developed countries) have been on one. It doesn't seem to matter whether it's the F-Plan diet, the Pineapple diet, liquid diets or the Drinking Man's diet, people will try almost anything in their frantic desire to shed a few pounds. Unfortunately, the results are usually the same. Although diets do produce results in the short term, very few dieters maintain their weight loss, no matter which diet they try. Even worse than this, most dieters end up bigger than they were before they started dieting. So, why don't diets work?

Diets are hard to do

Most diets involve a significant change in a person's normal eating habits over an extended period of time. But habits die hard; we cling to them because they fit in with our lifestyle and the people around us. And changing something that is second nature to us very often results in stress - especially if that change is at odds with the habits of those in our social and family world.

Dieting is also hard because it relies on our willpower to keep us on the right track. Willpower is often very strong at the start of a diet when we are desperate to change, but it can ebb and flow with the state of our health and the pressures and triggers of day-to-day life. Dieters rarely think of rehearsing how they will manage in difficult situations such as going out to dinner with friends; they just hope that their willpower will hold up and they punish themselves if it doesn't.

Willpower is hard to maintain for extended periods of time, especially if our dietary rules are too strict. Sometimes we feel like we've made some progress in our diet and so we become less inclined to put ourselves through the struggle of restricting our food. So dieting is hard because people haven't learned the difference between willpower and commitment to long-term behaviour change.

Diets make you feel hungry and deprived

Research shows that, whether you are fat or thin, diets make you very hungry and create powerful cravings for the very foods that dieters try to stay away from - such as sugars and fats. On top of these cravings, dieters also have to manage feelings of deprivation: 'Everybody is eating what I'm not allowed to. They can have it - why cant I?' This kind of thinking is likely to lead to rebellious overeating.

Dieters lapse and collapse

A diet only works for as long as you are on it. Most people get bored with rigid eating plans and go off the rails from time to time. The trouble is that for many people a lapse is a sign of failure. They tell themselves they've 'blown it' and experience feelings of inadequacy; the lapse becomes a slippery slope and they end up eating anything that's not nailed to the floorboards in the hope that they will 'start again tomorrow'. Such people go from diet to diet hoping to find the one that will stop them from failing, but such a diet doesn't exist, and they may end up bigger than ever each time they try.

Diets fail to address the emotional aspect of overeating

People very often eat to help deal with emotional problems such as stress, rather than because they're hunger. This is normal, but some people gain weight because they turn to food for emotional comfort or to cope with negative feelings like anger or loss. Dieting doesn't solve the problem of 'emotional' eating. If anything, it makes people more depressed - and losing weight will often make things worse, as people have to cope with the pressures and expectations that their new body shape can entail.

 Dieters usually fail to change their core habits

The only people who lose weight and keep it off permanently are those who have made permanent changes to their own eating and exercise habits, and to those of their families.

Dieters too often say or think things like: 'When I'm slim I'll never overeat again' or 'When I've lost this weight I'll go out and celebrate with a cream cake', or 'Why should I change the family eating habits just because I'm on a diet?' Too often those old eating habits will creep back in, no matter how much weight the dieter has lost, and in time they'll find themselves back at square one.

 Conclusion

Wanting to be a healthy weight and to manage one's eating in a world full of temptations is a laudable aim. However, dieting as we know it is not the way to do it. For long-term weight loss, many things - not just your nutritional habits - will have to change.