So Don't Diet

Poasted by gekko at 12:52 PM and filed under "Blob - Fitness, Weight, and Nutrition"

In one of my earliest posts on this blog, I commented that the common use of the word "diet" is problematic. See, I never really believed in "diets" -- whether it's Atkins, South Beach, Grapefruit, Jenny Craig, or The Alternating Dog Food and Peanut Butter Weekly Drink Program. Too few of them are realistic. Too few of them, I felt, involved how humans were intended to eat, and so they were all doomed to fail at some point.

Sure enough, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), reviewed 31 long-term studies lasting between 2 to 5 years and pretty much concluded that not only does dieting in the conventional sense of the word not work, it actually leaves you worse off than had you never dieted.

Dr Mann and colleagues sought to determine the long term effects of dieting and address the question "Would they have been better off to not go on a diet at all?".

So they analyzed every study they could find that followed people on diets for 2 to 5 years. Studies that take less than 2 years are "too short to show whether dieters have regained the weight they lost," they said.

They discovered that it would have been better for most of them if they had not gone on a diet at all.

"Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back," explained Dr Mann.

Their findings show that:

-- People on diets typically lose 5 to 10 per cent of their weight in the first 6 months.
-- But 33 to 66 per cent regain more than what they lose within 4 to 5 years.
-- Scientists Say Dieting Does Not Work

I confess that I followed a program that is considered a "diet" program. I used Weight Watchers© to help guide me, and I used it to track my eating, exercise, and progress. I do not credit WW with my success, however. My success (so far) has come about because I chose a program that educated me and gave me tools to do it on my own, and because -- and this is important -- I stuck with it. I changed my eating habits. I changed my exercise habits. I changed my life.

I'm still within that four-to-five year window that the researchers have noted serves as an outer limit for the eventual weight gain, and I have noticed my weight creeping back up again as I stop following my life-changing habits and go back to the emotion-based stress eating that got me fat in the first place.

But I'm not going to diet. I'm simply going to go back to the sensible eating habits I had adopted when I lost the 60 pounds.

Ooh, got me one hot comment!

Crash dieting is stupid and often counterproductive, and I guess I'd include "mainstream" diets in the crash category if they are, as you put it, unrealistic. You have to change your life/habits, I agree. I'm always "dieting," in the sense of being aware of calorie counts, trying to stay in a range, and making up for overages by cutting back the next day or days. But in that sense, I'm never really dieting either. Being careful is simply a habit now, just as being careless was one for a couple years.

Posted by: Paula at April 12, 2007 11:59 AM

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