Why Isn’t My Diet Working?
By Sue Roberts, MPH MS RD/CN, for Revive Your Life
Photo by dotbenjamin
What words come to your mind when you think of the word ‘diet’? I’ll bet its not luscious, enjoyable, tasty, or satisfying, is it? More than likely, it’s those dreaded D-words. You know the ones I mean, deprivation, denial, drudgery, difficult, or just plain disgusting.
No wonder we look for a quick fix when it comes to weight loss. We try to get where we want to go using the fastest method possible. It’s all about finding a way to limit the pain and see the greatest results in the shortest amount of time, right?
Is Faster Always Better?
The drastic measures that most diets require may offer a quick way to get those initial pounds to drop off, but do these diets work in the long-term? Most often, the answer is a resounding ‘No!’ Instead, most diets result in the yo-yo pattern of weight-loss. Once the weight is gained back, another diet plan is started, thereby creating the perpetual cycle of weight-loss and weight-gain that most dieters are accustom to. Ask any veteran dieter, and they’ll tell you this is true. Why else would the diet and weight loss industry take in over $40 billion in revenue each year?
Not only are an increasing number of people signing up for diet plans, but the diet plans continue to increase in cost. How can that be, you wonder, spending more money to eat less food?
A recent article on Forbes.com reported the dollar amounts that a dieter needs to spend in the first week of following seven popular diets. Here’s what they found:
NutriSystem - $98
Weight Watchers - $388
Zone - $273
South Beach - $323
The Abs Diet - $250
5-Factor Diet - $380
Martha Vineyard’s Diet Detox - $485
How Effective are Diet Plans?
A study conducted at UCLA showed that short term dieting (up to about 6 months) can be moderately successful, but two-thirds of all dieters regain the weight within 4 - 5 years. The reason that these diets ultimately fail is that the underlying causes of overeating aren’t usually addressed. Instead, the diets focus on counting calories, restricting fats, cutting out carbohydrates, not eating after 7pm, detoxifying your body, or other such tactics. While these approaches may work on a short term basis, they do nothing to teach lifestyle changes - changes that you can make to manage your weight for the rest of your life.
Taking the time to think about your actions, what you eat, and your current health and wellness habits is so critical. How can you change and grow beyond your current situation if you don’t think and carefully reflect on the circumstances which have brought you to where you are? Even though this thinking and reflecting may be hard work, it’s essential.
Taking a look at the reasons why you overeat is a good starting point for changing your eating behavior. What are your overeating triggers?
Finding Your Overeating Triggers
Researchers in the field have found that most often, there is a chain of events which leads up to overeating. Perhaps you worked late one day, and therefore didn’t get in your usual evening walk with the dogs. Instead, being so exhausted, you plopped in front of the TV and munched away on a whole bag of tortilla chips. Pretty soon, most of the bag was gone!
What would have happened had you stopped working, even only for 15 minutes, taken the dogs out for a shorter-than-normal walk, and then got back into your work? Don’t you think it would have been refreshing - that you would have come back to your work recharged and full of energy? How would this recharging then later affect your decision about becoming an after-work couch potato?
By deciding to take the shorter walk, you would be breaking up the pattern of behavior that starts with overwork and then leads to exhaustion. When you are overworked and exhausted, doing something positive for yourself, nurturing yourself, just seems like another chore. It’s one more thing that you can’t possibly muster up the energy to do. It’s the farthest thing from your mind. Do you see how perhaps breaking this chain of events can have an influence on the unhealthy behaviors that result?
Maybe, for you, the issue isn’t overworking. Maybe it’s the people around you who engage in unhealthy habits which then influence you to do the same. Maybe just the sight of your wife or teenage kids drinking cola is enough for you to say, “My, that really looks good. I know I shouldn’t, but I’ll have one anyway.” Maybe it’s when you go out to eat and see the person at the next table with a delicious looking plate of chicken fettucini alfredo. Does that influence the choice you make when it comes time to order your own dinner?
Carefully and thoughtfully examine the obstacles that stand in your way of changing your eating habits.
Begin to Think Long Term
Remember that developing new strategies and incorporating them in your life is not always going to be easy. You’re breaking patterns of coping that have been ingrained in your psyche for perhaps years. Please don’t be alarmed if you aren’t able to gain complete mastery over these changes immediately; it will take some time. More than likely it will be a two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back process. Don’t let this deter you from your goal, because ultimately you’ll be reaping the rewards of good health!
The failure to be patient and understand that changing habits is a process, not something that happens overnight, is one of the reasons why people fail when they try to follow a fad diet. They start out fine, doing what the plan or program prescribes them to do. The initial phases are relatively easy, aren’t they? Your conviction may be strong about following this new diet, you are tough, and you know you can do it! Then what happens over time? Your good intentions become harder and harder to follow through on as you encounter more and more obstacles that you react to in the old way - by not taking good care of yourself.
In addition, food is often what we turn to for comfort. Even though you know that food isn’t what will truly satisfy, eating is still comforting because it is so familiar. Often one binge results in a downward spiral because those feelings of being a failure emerge. Throwing in the towel on all those good intentions can come next; knowing that you’ve “blown it” then turns into just totally succumbing.
Do you refrain from expressing your feelings, stuffing them down with french fries and milkshakes instead? Do you run to Ben and Jerry’s when a stressful situation presents itself in your life?
Be honest with yourself when answering these questions and brainstorm some ways you can change these unhealthy eating practices. What could you do instead of eating when under stress? Take a warm bath, read a good mystery, take a walk around the block? Think about what would work for you.
Granted, dealing with the root issues may take a little longer, but soon you won’t have to deal with dieting and all those other dreaded D-words!
Please let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!
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4 Responses to “Why Isn’t My Diet Working?”
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Nice site, my first visit, good stuff, I’ll be back!
help me loose weight i ve tried so many things but nothing heips.
There is many alternative of loose your weight without diet, so you can eat as an usual, without fear of being fat. But also be careful, not all alternative way is good, some alternative way have side-effect, try to search for the testi first.
About diet again, i’m diet-victim, i spend a lot of money to get my belly become six-pack. I’m buying suplement (not 1-2 but 3 suplement) and do push up-sit up every night and morning. I’m suffer to make it, but i’m fail, what i get is sick and i lose my money.
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