WHY DO YOU REALLY SAY "DIET'S DON'T WORK?"

 

14^th February, 2021

I hear the words “Diets don't work!” so many times and those three small words can mean so many different things. If you would have asked me up until very recently “do diets work?”, I would have probably said not really. Diets, or to use the modern term “Weight Loss Programmes”, do work short term to help people lose weight, but the majority of people, mostly sooner rather than later, put it back on. It can be so much harder to maintain your weight loss than it is to lose the weight in the first place. Now this is where a lot of the confusion starts. “Diets” in themselves are only made to aid weight loss for a fix, a quick fix mainly, to lose weight. Most people want to lose weight quickly for whatever reason. It may be a few pounds for a special occasion or a holiday, followed by probably eating a lot on that occasion and then the pounds come straight back on.

Same really for when you lose weight for health reasons. It's the number on the scales that matters, not really, honestly, how you are getting there, and you don't really get any advice on how to keep it off. Most of the time the medical profession only what to know that magic number on the scales or your B.M.I. which is no real indicator of your true health.

The weight loss industry want you to shed those pounds over and over again, and even if they do offer you some kind of maintenance plan, it's not in their financial interest for slimmers to lose weight and keep it off long term. The majority of slimming clubs will have their short term members who want to lose weight for a holiday, etc. There will also be the ones who keep coming back because they have put weight back on and want to lose it again, and then there are the ones who keep coming back week after week, year after year, because they want to maintain their loss.

There is nothing wrong with this, if people are “happy” with it, if going to a club is for them, but I disliked going to slimming clubs. I hated the whole idea of being publically weighed, and following a diet that I quite often found complicated and restricting and didn't fit into my lifestyle. Even when I went to the N.H.S. group, it told me how to lose weight, but not how to really keep it off, or why i put it on so easily. I can't have been the only one that felt this way. For all the people that are in the magazines having lost weight, there are ones that feel like they have failed.There are those people who have lost weight, found the diet really easy and look great in photographs, and YOU have failed. Well, you haven't failed – the system has failed you. Diets don't work because, for many reasons, they are not complete, well monitored, or are simply not meant to work. The weight loss industry would not have survived over sixty years if their “diets” worked. They may have seemed to have changed things over the years, but their goal is still the same – to make money. Until recently the N.H.S. have put so much emphasis on a number on a scale and not so much on how and why you have really got there. What is becoming a worry is that when you realise that there is so much emphasis put on the number on the scales, but not on how the person is achieving the weight loss. Just what are they doing to achieve the loss? Knowingly or unknowingly so many want to get to a weight without really knowing what they are doing to their bodies. I know that I have done that in the past. Just wanting the weight to go down, without thinking about my health and wellbeing. You lose weight as quickly as you can, you look good, people comment on how good you look and then you go back to your old way of eating and, lo and behold, the weight comes back on.

To really lose weight the best way you can, you need to be prepared to lose it slowly, so slowly that no-one notices for a very long time, and be satisfied with that. You also need to look at what eating plan works for you and do your research to find out what is a sustainable way of living for you, you alone, and do it in the healthiest way that you can.

It can be so slow, so soul-destroying sometimes, with no quick fix, but when you begin to see the benefits they will be with you probably for a great deal longer, because it took a long time getting there. After all, if it takes a year or two, when you look back it's really no time at all if the results stay with you.

So, yes, I agree that “diets don't work”, but think about what you really want, no excuses, be honest with yourself, really look at yourself and work out just what is right for you. Do it for you, just you, and see where it takes you.

That's all for now,

Until next time,

Love

Jackie

xx