The top 5 reasons you should never go on a diet
I am betting most of you have been on one type of diet or another a few times in your life with varying degrees of success.
And let’s face it, there is no end to the type of diets out there – every day there seems to be some new diet that a celebrity or sports person is spruiking.
So before I go any further, let me just put it out there right at the start – never ever go on a diet! Unless you have certain allergies or requirements, you should never diet – instead just eat well 90% of the time.
If I still haven’t convinced you, let me give you 5 reasons as to why you should never diet again.
1. They don’t work!
Most people go on a diet to lose weight. There are varying statistics but roughly 90 to 95% of diets don’t work. People may lose the weight initially but then they ultimately put it back on (often with a few additional kilos than when they started).
And it is more than likely that people will diet more than once in their life. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results. So why keep doing something that isn’t going to get you the results you want?
2. They are only short term
It is all too common a scenario – you go on a diet and lose the weight. So you decide to go off the diet as you achieved your goals and guess what, you fall into the old eating habits and as sure as night follows day, the weight comes back on again.
Diets are only meant to be for a few weeks or months – so what happens after that? What about the next weeks, months or years afterwards? You want to live a long and healthy life – are you really going to be on a diet for every day that you live? It isn’t feasible or practical and you are only setting yourself up for failure.
3. Diets are often not healthy
There are some crazy diets out there – the baby food diet (just eating pureed food), the cabbage soup diet (smelly), the grapefruit diet, the tapeworm diet (ingesting a tapeworm to feed on the food you’re eating, so you don’t absorb the calories – how gross is that) and these are just a few that come to mind.
A lot of these diets do more harm than good – dietitians would say that some can and will put your health at risk!
My advice, follow the Australian Dietary Guidelines – they use the best available scientific evidence to provide information on the types and amounts of foods, food groups and dietary patterns that aim to promote health and well being, lower the risk of diet-related conditions and reduce the risk of chronic disease. For more details, click here.
4. They don’t address the real issues
There are often emotional and psychological reasons that people put on weight. One gentleman used to do my class and he would train like a demon. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t lose any weight. Then I discovered he would go home and eat a whole chicken. The reason being – he was so lonely and was desperate to meet someone so he found comfort in food.
So you diet and perhaps you do lose weight but does that really make you happier in the long term? As painful as it is, you have to dig deeper and work out the real reasons for being overweight and unhealthy in the first place then work out how you can overcome this.
5. You deprive yourself of one of life’s pleasures!
One of my greatest joys in life is going out to dinner with family or friends and enjoying a great meal and conversation. To me good food is one of life’s greatest pleasures – so why deprive yourself? There is so much GOOD food out there – you don’t have to eat crap to enjoy yourself. When you eat better you will find your taste buds change and your body will crave better quality food. By just changing your diet to eat healthy, you can lose weight without breaking into a sweat!
So no dieting! Choose healthy, filling options that taste good and fuel your body and allow yourself the occasional piece of chocolate or dessert after dinner. You’ll see the change without having to deprive yourself of everything!