Why diets don’t work and are bad for you …

Someone named “E. Wilson” is credited for saying, “There’s one thing to be said for a diet — it certainly does improve your appetite.”

It’s true!

Have you noticed how hungry people become who are on diets?

That’s because they aren’t taking care of themselves properly. In fact, any idea of “needing” to go on a diet usually comes because we haven’t been taking care of ourselves properly for a long time. So we buy into the irrational thinking that if we only over-react by dieting, we can fix things.

It doesn’t work that way.

Generally speaking, “diets” don’t work and are bad for you.

“Not true! I lost weight by going on the such-and-such diet!” is the immediate claim from some reading this.

But did you keep the weight off?

— silence —

And did a diet improve your overall fitness and health?

— deeper silence —

Let’s look at this simply. Diets usually don’t work because the underlying problem is a person so lacking in self-control that their eating habits, combined with a sedentary lifestyle, has resulted in unhealthy weight gain or even obesity. Most diets restrict a person’s nutritional intake beyond healthy guidelines, robbing the body of what it needs, when it needs it — and that is bad for you. Finally, even if out of desperation a person loses weight through dieting, studies show most will regain the majority of weight they lose (and often even more than that!) once they go off their diet; that’s because they have returned to their “norm” of not exercising any self-control and not exercising their bodies.

The answer to weight loss and weight management isn’t engaging in an unhealthy diet, but addressing the underlying or “core” reasons why you’re overweight in the first place. For most people, that will mean facing the reality that your nutritional regimen is usually anything but nutritional. Eating “healthy” (giving your body what it needs, when it needs it), practicing portion control, and replacing a sedentary lifestyle with a more active one usually will be all that is needed not only to reduce and manage weight, but to also achieve personal fitness and health.

That’s the one answer many dieter’s don’t want to hear!

But it’s the truth.

If you don’t want to be fat or obese, and if you do want to be fit and healthy, you must consistently care for your body properly (that not only includes nutrition and exercise, but also things like sleep patterns, managing and reducing stress, and even dealing with your relationships and spiritual health — but those are additional topics for another time). When you finally embrace this truth and use it to get and stay fit, you’ll find living a healthy lifestyle to be energizing and invigorating and you’ll never want to go back to the sluggish days of being too de-conditioned to get off the couch.

ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATIONS …

If you’re entertaining the idea of doing what it takes to get and stay fit, let me recommend two resources for you. The first is my book, Getting and Staying Fit. You can find that book on our website by clicking here. The other resource is a book by Dr. Ben Lerner called, Body by God. You can find that book by clicking here.

Scotty