Why Are Most Weight Loss Diets Doomed To Failure

Posted by Lorna on May 1st, 2008 at 10:16am

Did you know that 95% of all weight loss diets fail. Or put another way, 95% of dieters never achieve their weight loss goals. Now don’t get me wrong – I’m not suggesting it’s the dieters fault – on the contrary – it’s usually the diet itself that is unrealistic and unworkable.

A Dieters Nightmare - Information Overload

We are bombarded with constant information regarding the need to reduce our calories; consume less fat, red meat and eggs; eat more vegetables and fruit, and so on. The list is seemingly endless, and we are told that if we do this we will be slimmer and healthier.

This is true up to a point, but the problem is that for the majority of people it is a very difficult eating pattern to implement - and worse, it will not cause loss of body fat in the majority of circumstances.

Adjustment is the Key To Lasting Weight Loss - Not Starvation

Loss of fat medically involves adjusting the balance of the various food groups in the diet, not just reducing calories. Unfortunately, loss of body fat is not a simple equation whereby if you reduce your intake of food, you will inevitably lose fat. You won’t.

All experienced dieters will be familiar with the shock and anger of staring at the non-moving bathroom scales, even though they have eaten virtually nothing. It is balance, not quantity, which makes a diet work. And this makes life much easier for everyone, as you can easily keep to the diet when you find food satisfying, and you feel well, especially when there are no restrictions on the quantities of many tasty foods.

In many instances, when you reduce your intake of food, you lose body protein (especially muscle). So while your body shape may appear smaller, and your waist measurement may decrease, the amount of body fat remains virtually the same. What’s more, as the underlying layer of body fat is only slightly reduced, when you relinquish your starvation diet and resume eating (even moderately), the body proteins are the first to be reformed by the body, so you rapidly increase in weight (and girth), because protein is twice as heavy as fat. The classic failed diet! So you see, you didn’t fail, the diet was doomed to failure from the start.

So we arrive at the next obvious question: why bother? If all diets are doomed to failure (or involve intense pain and suffering), there doesn’t appear to be much point. Well there is! First, all diets are not doomed to failure, it is only the way in which the diet is applied that is unworkable.

Tags: weight loss diets

Under Diet+ Weight Loss Tags: weight loss diets