Why Diets Do Not Work

While researching for information that can help you lose weight and keep it off we found a fantastic eBook called 'Thinking your way thin - The Psychology of Weight Loss' by Dr Lavinia Rodriguez. It has some fantastic pieces of advice, techniques and explanations to help you understand why diets do not work. The information which stood out most to me was:

The main things wrong with most diets from our brain’s perspective are:

Unrealistic Expectations – for example, a diet might tell you that you can lose 20 pounds in two weeks.

Rigid Rules – for example, you might be told exactly what you can and cannot eat while on the diet.

Eliminate Foods – you might be told, for example, that you cannot eat carbohydrates, sweets, or your favorite foods.

Have Beginning and End – Why else would people say such things as, “I going to start a diet,” “I just went off my diet,” “I’m going to start a diet on Monday.”

This graphic below helps demonstrate the cycle of why diets do not work further:

Dr Rodriguez then extends upon this further by showing what the brain likes and dislikes:

The Brian Dislikes

Rigidity – such as rigid regulations about what we should eat and not eat, when we should eat, and how we should eat.

Deprivation – such as not being allowed to eat favorite foods

Feeling overwhelmed – such as when our goals seem too large to accomplish (e.g. the thought of having to lose 100 pounds as opposed to losing five pounds).

The Brian Likes

Flexibility – knowing that you can change things whenever you want; thinking of “striving” for something rather than “having to” accomplish it.

Praise – pointing out things done right rather than what has not been done right; being reinforced for effort as well as actions.

Small steps – breaking large goals into small steps and focusing only on each small step before going on to the next.

So by being flexibly, praising yourself and taking small steps you are much more likely to lose weight and keep it off. These 3 point are everything a diet is not; A diet is not Flexible as you must not eat this or that; Praising as when you do not lose as much as 'you thought you should' you berate yourself instead of praising yourself for the amount you did lose; Small steps in a diet do not seem to happen as you have a global goal of losing your weight and working toward it.

The advice I think best works you towards weight lose in a way your brain like is this by David Wolfe:

…just add in good stuff and eventually it will crowd out the bad stuff. It’s so simple and deactivates the mental neurosis we have about diets and what we have to eat.

We hope you have found this post, not only informative, but helpful in you losing weight and keeping it off.

Best wishes

Mindful Mark