Diets suck. Beyond that, they simply aren’t effective. At all. Want to know why you should ditch your diet for good?
Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that I’m speaking from a place of privilege. While I have first-hand experience dieting, I exist and have always existed in a body deemed acceptable by society. I don’t know what it’s like to live in a larger body, and have never experienced the prejudice and discrimination associated with living in a larger body. It is in no way my intention to bring shame or judgment upon people who turn to dieting to try and escape society’s scrutiny of their body. My only intention here is to share some credible information about dieting and why diets suck. My hope is that all of our bodies will be loved and appreciated for what they are, and that the fad diets die. Optimistic, I know, but a girl can dream, right? So, without further ado, here’s why diets are the worst and you should quit them forever.
1. Diets suck
It’s all an evil cycle, right? You start a diet because you feel pretty bad about yourself to begin with. “This is going to be the one,” you tell yourself. It starts off okay, maybe even better than okay, but before long you’re miserable. This diet, just like the last one requires you to do things that suck. Count calories, restrict certain foods or food groups, maybe even drinking your meals. You have low energy, are constantly hangry, and aren’t even seeing the results you were hoping for. Eventually, you quit. Why? Because dieting sucks. Before long, you’ve gained back any weight you might have lost, maybe plus some and you’re right back where you started. But the next diet will be better…right?!
2. Diets don’t work
That’s right friends, the secret none of the diet companies want you to know…they don’t work. Not a one of them. If they did, wouldn’t we all be on that diet? All the newspapers would be praising this miracle diet that finally works, and we’d no longer hear about the “obesity epidemic” because everyone’s successfully dieting (now there’s two words I never put together…). That’s not the case though, because diets don’t work. Keto, paleo, military, cabbage soup, Atkins, raw, Zone, South Beach, low-carb, low-fat, intermittent fasting, Whole 30, I could go on and on… None of them are proven to be effective at long-term health and weight loss. Some result in weight loss initially, however, none have any research supporting their results for longer than two years. And two years really isn’t all that long, especially when it means gaining that weight back… In fact, dieting and gaining weight are related. We don’t have good research to conclude that dieting definitely leads to weight gain, but we also don’t have good research to conclude that dieting definitely leads to weight loss either.
3. Diets can be dangerous
Many diets promote the elimination of certain foods or even whole food groups. This can cause nutrient deficiencies, especially when not closely monitored by a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN). Since these diets were developed by people without the nutrition education and knowledge of an RDN (a warning sign in and of itself) there’s a good chance they won’t be providing you with all the nutrition you need.
Dieting is also a major risk factor for developing disordered eating patterns. In some cases, this can lead to an eating disorder, and eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. At the very least, dieting can lead to unhealthy perceptions about food. Not a good thing.
4. Diets are based on bad science
One of the things that makes some of these fad diets so alluring is that they sound real, right? They talk about boosting metabolism (no foods do this in a significant way). Melting away belly fat (you don’t get to choose where your body is going to lose fat). Detoxifying your body (literally not a thing food does, that’s what your kidneys and liver are for). Some may even site studies to back up their claims. Be wary of animal studies being used to make sweeping claims about humans (we’re not rats or mice, so there’s no guarantee results from an animal study will apply to humans). Also watch out for study cherry-picking where diet creators conveniently site the couple of studies that “prove” their point (and ignore all the studies that don’t). Another good practice is to look at the credentials of the person spouting health claims. Just because someone has a Ph.D. does not mean they know squat about nutrition. Your best bet is to trust the people who actually have years of education in nutrition, complete extensive supervised practice, and pass a rigorous competency exam (plus continuing education)–otherwise known as Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RD or RDN).
5. Diets don’t teach you anything
Even if a diet did work, what are you going to do when the diet ends? More than likely, you’d go back to your pre-diet eating patterns–those same ones that caused you to gain all that weight in the first place. Dieting doesn’t teach you how to have a healthy relationship with food. It gives you prescribed rules to follow either until you lose the weight you want, or forever. Now, I can’t speak for everyone, but I can’t imagine giving up some of my favorite foods forever just because they don’t fit into a diet.
6. Diets only care about numbers, not health
The goal of diets is almost always weight loss. It’s about how many calories you can eat, how many points food is worth, how many pounds you can lose. These numbers are just that, numbers. Numbers don’t define health. People in small bodies can be unhealthy, and people in larger bodies can be healthy. How many pounds you weigh can not definitively tell you if you’re healthy or not. It’s about so much more than that.
7. Diets don’t fit into everyday life
Unless everyone around you is going to follow the same diet, it’s next to impossible to fit a diet into your busy daily life. You have to constantly plan what you’re going to have for your next meal or snack. Not to mention figuring out friend outings, family holidays, work potlucks, travelling, special events, etc. Even us dietitians don’t think about food that much!
8. Diets don’t understand you
The thing about diets is that they aren’t designed specifically for you. They’re developed to somehow magically work for everyone exactly the same which is fundamentally false. You’re unique, with your own life, exercise habits, family history, genetic predisposition, tastes, metabolism, risk factors, etc. Diets take none of that into account, and are supposed to just work for everyone. Now that just doesn’t make sense.
9. Diets teach you to ignore your body cues
We have feelings like hunger and fullness for a reason. They’re intended to alert us to when to start and stop eating. Diets don’t use these cues and instead teach you to eat when you’re allowed, and stop once you hit your calorie limit for the day. Not only do you learn to ignore feelings of hunger, but you also never learn what it feels like to be satisfied. Your body is telling you things for a reason because it has your best interests at heart. It needs you to survive, that’s literally its only job.
10. Diets will inevitably fail you
This ties into #2 above, but is an important point I want to highlight. The diet is failing you. You are not failing the diet. Diets are tricky in that they convince you that if they aren’t working it must be your fault. Your shortcoming. I’m here to tell you that simply isn’t true. You aren’t failing the diet, it’s failing you. You never had a chance to succeed because the diet was rigged all along. It was packaged in false claims, and just the right amount of testimonials to convince you it must work. But it doesn’t. No matter how hard you try. You didn’t fail. The diet failed you.