For a while now I’ve been wanting to write an article about the lessons I have learned from my experience with dieting. And how I got proof after proof that dieting doesn’t work. And it suddenly dawned on me – it’s been nearly 10 years! A decade has passed since I was a carefree young girl, indulging in fried chicken and various junk foods without a single worry. A decade has gone by since that one day I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I see. A decade has passed since I said to myself “Hmm I need to lose 3-4 kg to get back into shape. Piece of cake! it will take me no time!”
And that’s how it started. Diet after diet, year after year, I was losing the weight with ease, only to have it come back with vengeance shortly after I resumed ‘normal’ eating. Those 3-4 kg turned into 5, then 6, then 10.
In my heavy days I would go shopping for smaller clothes. I would buy a couple of sizes smaller outfits than I actually needed. And I would tell myself “I would need these after my juice fast ends”. And surely, I did wear them. But for how long? Perhaps a week? Maximum 10 days! Because that’s how long it took me to balloon back to the weight I started off with. And yes, I had to go shopping again. But this time, I was buying a couple of sizes bigger clothes, something that I could fit into. Now, that my juice fast has ended.
Nevertheless, I am now 10 years older, and dare I say it – wiser! I no longer buy new clothes with every new diet. Now, I have two sets of clothes – a set for the fit me and a set for the heavy me – problem solved lol!
Anyway, on a more serious note, I have learned so much throughout those 10 years of dieting, and wanted to share some of the most important lessons with you, my reader.
So, here they are:
1. Dieting is isolating.
There is no way to sugar coat this. Dieting is amongst some of the loneliest activities ever. I mean, it could even be compared to a prisoner that’s locked in a cell. The only small happiness for him are the sparse unsatisfying meals that are being brought in to his cell a couple of times a day. Okay, maybe that comparison is a bit too exaggerated. But I remember the countless times, when I had to attend parties during my diet. I had to prepare my meals and bring them to the party. I had to withstand all the strange looks at the table, answer demotivating questions and listen to various comments, like “Life is short, enjoy it!”. I believe that this is a big reason why dieting doesn’t work. Not many people can survive many social situations without caving in.
2. Dieting increases your appetite.
Have you ever gone on a diet only to spend the whole time dieting and salivating over forbidden foods, planning your shopping trip after your diet ends and imagining your post-dieting-not-so-slimming foods?
Economic Times https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/how-to/dieting-makes-cravings-worse-here-is-how-to-own-your-cravings/articleshow/88987643.cms?utm_source=contentofinte published an article about the so called “starvation study”, which was done back in 1940s by diet researcher Ancel Keys. Keys asked 36 men, who had been normally eating 3,500 daily calories, to cut their food intake to 1,600 calories a day. What the researchers found was that the restriction triggered a notable psychological change in the men, who became preoccupied with food.
“They stopped doing anything except laying in their beds, talking and thinking about foods,” said Traci Mann, who heads the health and eating laboratory at the University of Minnesota. She notes that the men even planned food-related careers like opening a grocery store or restaurant, and they stayed preoccupied with food long after the study ended. “These are men in the 1940s who probably never cooked a meal in their entire life,” Mann noted. “And they started cutting recipes out of the newspaper.”
3. The weight you lose by dieting, creeps back on quickly after your diet ends.
This one is related to the previous point. It’s inevitable not to gain the weight that you’ve lost whilst dieting due to the psychological changes that occur in your brain in that period. We don’t often think about this, but that’s exactly how our bodies are designed. We are not broken or damaged. Just the opposite, we are perfect and our brains react in the way they are supposed to. Let me paint a picture for you, so it’s easier to understand. Millions of years ago, people used to live in caves. They didn’t have structured meals, like we do today – breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks in between. No! They used to eat when there was food. Back then, there was no KFC, McDonalds or grocery shops. They ate when plants and wild fruits were in season, and when they managed to catch and kill a small animal. But the rest of the time they starved, or how we call it today – they were on a diet. The reason for those natural psychological changes that occurred, even million years ago, is to motivate people to seek and find food. Otherwise, they won’t survive. But, finding food at that time was very difficult. Now, however, for people from the developed countries, finding food is incredibly easy. Grocery stores not far from your own doorway, fast food chains and restaurants are everywhere, petrol stations are piled up with sweets And therefore, putting on weight is incredibly easy too. And that’s why dieting doesn’t work today, even if it did in the past.
4. Regular dieting promotes fear of food in people.
Due to constant restricting and relaxing with food, eventually one develops fear associated with eating. Questions, like “Shall I eat this?”, ”Is it going to make me fat?” and “How much shall I eat?” precedes every single meal. For me this got the point that it made me really confused and stressed. At some point I had no idea how, what and when to eat.
5. Dieting promotes binge eating.
For most people, including me, prolonged periods of dieting cycles encourage binge eating. For example, I used to love nuts. And I always had a variety of nuts in the cupboard – almonds, cashew, peanuts – these were my favourites. But every time I planed to start a diet, I would make it my mission to finish all the nuts in the cupboard. And there were lots of nuts in my cupboards – around 2-3 kg at times. – “I can’t throw them away, they are so expensive. I must finish them all“ – I would say to myself – “That way they are not going to tempt me during and after my diet, when I will be slim and nuts will no longer interest me.” What a ridiculous logic, isn’t it? So I would binge on nuts for a week, then go on a diet. And shorty after I end the restriction, I would buy more nuts, thinking that I will be able to control myself this time. But, of course that was never the case. Before I even realised it, I was back to square one, overweight and binging on nuts. Binge eating was a big one for me, and it really made me understand that dieting doesn’t work.
6. Dieting nurtures the “All or nothing mindset”.
The “all or nothing mindset”, which is also sometimes referred to “Black and white” thinking is essentially the constant cycling between restriction and relaxing with food.
7. Dieting is the inventor of the ‘Yo-yo’ effect.
More often than not dieting leads to losing weight and then gaining it back quickly.
8. Dieting promotes disease.
Your organs do a a lot of hard work, digesting and absorbing the food you eat. The restrictive periods related to dieting might not be so bad, as I already explained above, that’s how our bodies are designed. Nevertheless, what happens after the diet ends, is what is really detrimental for your health, especially for the organs responsible for digestion, such as liver and pancreas. Suddenly they need to start working really hard in order to be able to cope with the amount and quality of food you are ingesting now.
9. Dieting Doesn’t Work.
Well if you are still not convinced, please reread this article from the beginning.
10. Dieting makes you fatter!
Slowly over time, after numerous cycles of restriction and losing the weight and gaining it back, most people unnoticeably gain slightly more weight than they had started with before the diet. This on the other hand leads to them gaining weight over slowly time.
There! 10 these are the lessons that I have learned during the last decade through constant cycles of dieting and binging.
Hope you enjoyed this article and find the information in it useful.
Best,
Snezhana