Why diets don't work
I advocate a healthy, balanced eating plan. This is an eating pattern which suits your particular lifestyle and which is not extreme in any form. Moderation is the key word and any reputable dietician will design an eating plan to fit your needs. This is an important point. Design your eating plan with your dietician and ask her/him to include you favourite foods (i.e. those which you usually exclude when you go on diet). Individuals who suffer from medical problems such as high cholesterol, coronary heart disease, diabetes, liver or kidney malfunction, etc, must follow the eating plan devised by their dietician, even if this means cutting out chocolates, biscuits and the like. My appeal here is anyone who has repeatedly tried to lose, but without success. I am talking to the person who cannot lose weight because s/he has dieted forever (or it feels like forever)!
My definition of a die-t is any regime that stipulates food choices, (i.e. you have no say in the food choices and you eventually end up feeling deprived). Die-ts stipulate what you can or cannot eat, as well as when you may or may not eat certain foods. I write the word die-t with a hyphen because I think that every time you go on die-t, a little bit of you dies! Every time you go on a die-t, you start the "die-t cycle". (You may have been on this cycle your entire life!)
You decide to go on die-t, usually on Monday. You make this resolution with some enthusiasm because this time you are going to crack the problem. But it does not last. There is a reason for this! Die-ts leave you feeling deprived (physically and emotionally). As a result, very soon into the "die-t" (usually three or four days), you will "break" the die-t, binge for a few days, maybe weeks and then decide to go on die-t (on Monday of course). The night before you go on your new die-t (usually Sunday night) you go into what I call "squirrel mode". That is when you start eating everything in your kitchen because on Monday you are starting a new diet. Monday you start your new diet and three days later you are feeling deprived and the cycle starts all over again. Sound familiar!
Eventually you will end up with a "die-t mind-set" and you will categorize your behaviour around food into "good and bad". When you are "good" it means you have stuck to your diet. When you are "bad" you have broken your diet. Eventually you start to feel good or bad in relationship to food and because food dominates your every thought, you start to think about yourself in these terms. Every time you fail at dieting, you become no good, lack discipline, etc. Diets do work. If you cut down your calories you will lose weight. Sometimes you have to be mean to yourself to stick to them. Dieters never ascribe failure to the diet; they only blame themselves for lacking discipline, control etc. Everyday foods are often imbued with negative feelings. Ask any person who has dieted to name a few "die-t foods", and apples and cottage cheese will hit the list. The "bad" foods that are usually excluded are sweets, chocolates, cakes and biscuits. What a pity! Life is too short to deprive oneself of niceties (in moderation of course).
Die-ts do not work! They offer false control and magical cures. They usually require strict adherence and do not allow you to make your own food choices. If you have always been on diet, you will never have learnt how to make food choices. You will only have learnt how to go on a new die-t and how to deprive yourself. If you have been on diets for a long time, you probably will not even get past the first morning. You might have the breakfast, feel very in control, and then your work colleagues bring cake for tea! You have the cake, and decide to start the diet again tomorrow. Sometimes you do not only have one piece of cake, you have two. (Remember, you are now off the diet and have gone into "squirrel mode" because you will start again tomorrow).
The answer is to stop dieting right now. Get off the "die-t cycle" and stop depriving yourself. Remember that 100% compliance is impossible. If you eat healthily 75% of the time, you will be well on you way to wellness. Lapses, (i.e. having dessert after your meal) are not the start of a crisis! Work on normalizing your relationship with food. If you find that you cannot stick to a regular healthy eating plan, deeper issues may be at stake and you should speak to a psychologist to find out what these are. (See seeking help). In my video on the psychology of weight loss, I extend the above ideas. I also tell you how to go about understanding your relationship with food, how to identify the trigger factors that set off your eating, the concept of lapses and many other ideas. Click here to link to the video page.