Dieting has become incredibly common, with people frequently saying, "I'm on this new diet" on a daily basis. Many individuals embark on diets for health and weight management purposes, even when the diet itself wasn't originally designed for these goals. Diets often involve restricting or eliminating certain foods or entire food groups in pursuit of health and weight loss benefits. However, more often than not, we find ourselves disappointed with the diet. Why does this promising dietary approach fail so many of us so badly?

Welcome to the trap - the dieting cycle

1. New Diet: Dieting cycle always start with a new trendy diet with promising results, which typically involves strict rules and the limitation/exclusion of certain foods or food groups.

2. Temporary weight loss: Soon after starting, you will see a drastic change in your weight that aligns with the promised effect.

3. Physical and psychological deprivation: However, strict restriction and dietary avoidance can put both your body and mind under stress, creating a sense of impending breakdown.

4. Break the diet: Eventually, you reach a point where you can’t adhere to the diet anymore, leading to behaviours such as binge eating and compensatory eating.

5. Weight regain: Your weight rebounds to the original weight, if not higher.

6. Disappointment: The whole dieting experience is incredibly frustrating, leading to feelings of shame and guilt because you couldn’t sustain the diet that initially seemed so promising. This can harm your self-esteem and make you more susceptible to falling into the next diet.

It always under-delivers - unrealistic claims and expectations

What lead most people to falling into dieting cycle is the unrealistic claims. They sell the idea of a “quick fix” for weight, confidence, happiness, health and success, but this is rarely the case.

It's common to hear stories of people loosing a significant amount of weight in a short time, which can lead us to believe that achieving half of that weight loss in the same period would be impressive. Losing 10kg in 2 weeks, for instance, is incredibly unrealistic when compared to the more reasonable guideline of 0.5-1kg of weight loss per week in ideal conditions.

Diets often imply that a lower weight equates to better health, happiness, and self-confidence. However, studies have shown that weight fluctuation, including weight gain, loss and fluctuation, can lead to a higher risk of mortality than maintaining a stable weight (1-2). Research has also linked dieting to reduced quality of life, particularly for individuals with a history of dieting (3).

Diets work against our bodies - metabolic adaptation

Despite our modern civilization, our bodies still retain their ancient "hunter and gatherer" instincts. When our bodies experience a lack of energy and nutrients (as during a diet), they respond as if facing a food scarcity, activating the “energy-saving mode” (the starvation mode). These include reduced involuntary movements, shutting down "unnecessary functions," and slowing down metabolic rates. Our bodies are so smart and adaptable that they can minimise all our dieting effort, as the body consider the changes as threatening events. Not only physically, our bodies will also hype up our senses and alertness for possible food source, making food extra desirable.

Dieting sets you up for failure - the harmful effects

Dieting essentially repackages and promotes behaviors like food restriction, avoidance, rules, rituals, and fixation. These outcomes, as discussed earlier, can lead to unhealthy patterns, affecting both physical and mental health.

In terms of weight loss, diets often lead to weight cycling, with fluctuations in body composition. Rapid weight loss typically involves minimal fat loss and significant water and muscle loss since the body can only burn a limited amount of fat at once. Consequently, regaining this lost weight results in fat and water gain, contributing to a net loss in muscle. Since muscle plays a crucial role in fat burning and daily energy consumption, each weight cycle slowly depletes your ability to burn fat, making future fat loss even more challenging.

What to do instead?

Rather than working against your body, consider working with it. While diets may seem like an appealing structured approach, the reality often contradicts this perception. The dieting cycle has repeated itself countless times. When contemplating a diet, ask yourself whether you can maintain it for life, whether it fosters a healthy relationship with food and body, and whether it brings joy and fulfilment to your life. If any of these questions receive a negative answer, it might be best to skip the trend.

At Timeless Dietetics, we advocate for a timeless approach to diet, one that aligns with individual needs, lifestyles, health, and goals. Follow us for evidence-based nutrition information or work with us to break the dieting cycle today (make a booking here)

References

1. Zhang Y, Hou F, Li J, Yu H, Li L, Hu S, Shen G, Yatsuya H. The association between weight fluctuation and all-cause mortality. Medicine(Baltimore).2019;98(42):e17513

2. Wannamethee SG, Share AG, Walker M. Weight change, weight fluctuation, an mortality. Arch Intern Med.2002;162(22):2575-2580

3. Burns CM, This MAR, Seidell JC. The relationship between quality of life and perceived body weight and dieting history in Dutch men and women. Int. J. Obes.2001;25:1386-1392

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