Several Exceedingly Good Reasons Why Diets Do Not Work The Way They Are Supposed To
Many people in the world are overweight. And most of those people have tried to diet at some point in their lives. The vast majority of them will have seen only transient success, if that. And there are good reasons why diets do not work.
The big picture reason why diets don’t work is that people stop following them. Of course, people stop following them for a multitude of reasons. Most common is that people force themselves to limit their caloric intake or their selection of foods to an extreme, and then are unable to stick to the plan. And people who do succeed in losing weight on a diet are often hugely discouraged when they go off the diet and the weight immediately returns.
Diets are not a natural way to eat, usually. They require radical changes in the way that people normally eat, and make dieters give up some of their favorite foods. Willpower generally cannot overcome biology when a dieter’s body is constantly telling them to go back to their old way of eating. Sooner or later, they will.
Often, it’s not just hard to fight oneself when it comes to eating. People who restrict their food to an extreme extent often find it hard to enjoy social events, which can be hugely food centered. Many people also get very depressed when they don’t manage to maintain their diet, and then they give up on it entirely.
A biological reason that diets don’t work the way we would think they should is that calorie restriction is being employed incorrectly in most cases. Yes, people must eat less than they burn to lose weight, but if they eat much less than they burn, their metabolisms will slow, and they will wind up eating the same amount but still not losing. This is, of course, very frustrating.
While on a diet, people do not just lose pounds of fat. Actually, if they don’t exercise, each pound lost is about one-third water, one-third muscle, and one-third fat. Since muscle is where most of the calories the body burns are used, losing muscle lowers your overall caloric needs. And when these people stop dieting, the water weight and fat come right back, but the muscle is gone.
All of these are good reasons why diets do not work. Which means that people who want to lose weight need to go about it differently. To date, no easy way has been found to take off those extra pounds– they all require a measure of hard work. But the good news is, they can also be genuinely long term solutions.
A lot of people who haven’t, and most people who have been on a diet, know about the caloric balance. People must take in less calories than they burn in order to lose weight. But people making extreme changes in their diets rarely stick with them. So, these changes must be made very slowly, if they are intended to be made permanent.
Making gradual, permanent changes in lifestyle and letting yourself get used to them is the best way to lose weight. Eat half as much sugar or fat as you normally do, and make no other changes for a month. Then add half an hour of walking, biking, or pilates, three times a week, for the next month. Don’t try to make any changes that sound difficult rapidly. It can be hard to be patient, but remember to make slow, permanent changes, and you will also change forever.