One reason dieting does not work

@Devasa

I am ready to claim that lowering your calorie intake together with raising your burn is the ONLY way to loose weight. Whatever evidence might be find for different diets or eating habits leading weight loss, I find it hard that they will trump the law of conservation of energy.

Wow. First of all, I am truly sorry to sound "smarter than thou" but this is a field in which I have some formal training. Some of the comments posted thus far are (I apologize!) off the mark. For example, @ Devasa- Paleolithic humans did not eat butter and ghee, because they did not husband animals. Also, in any of assessments of the nutrition of Paleolithic peoples that i have seen, it has not been concluded that any of them had 70% fat diets.

But more to the point, it seems all the comments missed the idea of this study. This is not a study about what we should or should not eat (to lose weight or for any other purpose.) It is study on an aspect of behavioral psychology as it relates to food. And the reason most diets fail (the statistic is something like 95% of people on what is considered a "regimented diet plan" will weigh more in a year than when they started) is precisely because they do what most of the commenters have done: they make prescriptions about what to and what not to eat without considering and addressing the psychology behind why we eat what we eat.
The point of this article is that our eating behaviors (including, as in this case, simple quantity of what we eat) are determined by far more than what we intellectually think would be healthy or would get us to the desired weight. We are multi-layered in our psyches and we often don't give enough to credit to what goes on underneath the level of our conscious thinking minds-- and how that activity often controls our behavior.

To would-be dieters, my advice, from my relative who is a qualified dietician is as follows:

Don't eat snacks. Don't eat between meals and don't drink soft drinks. Eat good wholesome meals with fibre and get plenty of fresh vegetables. Minimise fat. Don't drink alcohol either. Get some exercise.

If people only stuck religiously to these rules they would not become overweight. All these people who say they get fat because they have a poor metabolism are kidding themselves.

Dieters, even successful ones never seem to understand the ratchet effect of dieting.

When you go on a "crash diet" which is self described as temporary, in order to fit into a dress or for some function, chances are you will lose weight. But you will balloon afterwards.

When you crash diet, your body then goes into "hunger mode", waiting for the diet to end. Once the diet ends, your body tries to put on as many calories as it can. After all, as far as your body is concerned, it doesn't know when it is going to suffer a famine again.

I am sure this is comes from our evolution. We came from times when it made absolute sense to stuff your face when the opportunity arose.

Weight loss is both simple and complicated. Certainly the laws of physics dictate that if you consume less and expend more you will have a net loss, simple. But if all your body needed was energy then what we ate would not matter. Humans need particular nutrients as well as a certain amount of energy. If a person doesn’t consume enough nutrients (vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, fats, sugars, yes all of those things are necessary to be healthy) the body reacts by slowing its expenditure of energy to preserve its reserves. Additionally, studies show that we are physiologically designed to consume more than we expend, so if you exercise more you crave more.

In short most people have to fundamentally change their lives and how they approach both their daily activities and food. To lose weight you have to eat a balanced diet of healthy food, many more fruits and veggies than most westerners eat. You must consume less calories than you expend. You must exercise some, even if it is just walking around more frequently than most westerns do. There is no magic plan or simple solution. And of course, you must want to change. If you don’t want to change, no amount of any kind of diet will do you any good.

But none of this matters, because if people were able to understand and execute this method of weight loss there wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry built around weight loss.

@JGRadus

You're dead right. Fat = Energy In - Energy Out.
But so many people think they can lose weight through exercise.
What they don't understand is that 20 minutes on an exercise bike amounts to about 3 Pringles.

Diets won't work to take weight off and keep it off, if lifestyle changes don't include exercise to build and maintain healthy muscle mass and efforts to improve stress tolerance. Most dieters who don't exercise lose excess water weight, then muscle mass - before they lose fat mass. When they return to previous eating habits, of course they will regain water weight and add to fat mass *before* they add muscle mass because the body has been in calorie deprivation and so returns to storing fat. Water is retained by sedentary individuals because exercise influences the production and activity of cell surface 'ports' called 'porins' that regulate water balance within cells. The amount of water retained is determined by energy metabolism, signaled by both muscle and fat cell activity.

A large percentage of the US population are either overweight or obese. The poll results reported below and previous studies evaluating American's skewed perceptions of body size show that it is out of alignment with actual weight.

Many Americans Don't Even Know They're Fat. Sept 2, 2010
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100902/hl_hsn/manyamericansdontevenknowthe...

'Thirty percent of those in the "overweight" class believed they were actually normal size, while 70 percent of those classified as obese felt they were simply overweight. Among the heaviest group, the morbidly obese, almost 60 percent pegged themselves as obese, while another 39 percent considered themselves merely overweight.'

http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20100902/hl_hsn/manyamericansdontevenknowthe...

Dieting is way bad, the key is to drink lot of water all day, about 2 litre a day.
You should eat anything you want but in moderation. Moreover it's far better to eat good in the morning and at noon but light the night.
Finally make sure you never eat anything between.

It's vital to eat vegetable and fruits. Avoid all soft drinks, fruit juices, even light coke. At least you can drink pure squeezed yourself orange juice in the morning, avoid any crap even the pure orange juice from the shop, just compare the taste and look, nothing alike!

If you keep to that routine and have good sleep, drink water and practice sport you will see the difference very fast.

So avoid OTT fatty stuff, but don't private yourself. Just eat what is right and the right time.

I don't know how anyone can tolerate most diets out there.
The sheer drudgery of constrained shopping lists, portion
control (weighing or measuring it), drowning in ghastly
lists of numbers and schedules and plans. It
seems to demand nothing short of self obsession. And
consider what such a dreary existence does
to the mind? and how that feeds back and alters the
body, the metabolism etc? Look at the French paradox
in cardiovascular disease, they consume a lot of fat
and smoke but are no worse off for it. I suggest it is
because they are less bored and stressed than others who
obsess over every meal.

Science and its studies go around in circles and tell
us nothing. They seem to change their mind from month
to month. The studies are inane to the point of being
a joke. For instance did anybody in the study mentioned
in the article consider the people involved are
going to eat different when they are asked to behave
like lab rats? No? why not? any idea how bored people
get in a situation like that?

We are a lot less active, chronically so, than our
ancestors. We are going to put on weight unless we
eat normal food and use our bodies. It is that simple.
The rest is just thinly veiled profiteering at the
expense of people unhappy about their weight and
unwilling to do what needs to be done about it.

It seems the study didnt control for weight, which is silly given its purpose. One would expect that "dieters" in the experiment are already overweight - prone to eating more pizza/cokkies/whatever...

The comments are more delightful to read than the actual article. I am really glad that some of you posted such insightful information in such simplistic way to understand.

The best place to start when trying to lose weight is to do more grocery shopping. So often, people don't have food at home so they go to Burger King, McDonalds or a nice restaurtant and consume 1500 calories in a sitting. You could eat the exact same meal at home and consume a bar minimum of 1/3 less calories.

Once you start buying your groceries, start buying smart. Are you getting all the fruits and vegetables you need? Can you control having three boxes of cookies in the cupboard or should you just buy one now and one next week? Read labels. Snack bars may seem identical but one could be 120 calories and the other 250 calories.

It really is a lifestyle change as well. Exercise via improvement. If you ran 20 minutes today, try to run 25 minutes (or even 22) the next time. Same for weight training. If what you're doing is easy, you're not working hard enough.

And remember, slow and steady wins the race. Maybe you want to lose 10 pounds ( or even 4 stone) before beach season but it is not just about beach season 2010. Its about beach season 2011 to 2050 and short terms gains are not what matters most here.

Good luck.

Doc, note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.

Proceeding to forward this article... to my mum

@ Philip OCarroll:

I really like your "hunger mode" explanation. I plan to make use of it in the future.

And about the Pringles, it's not like we operate the entire day on thin air. We use the energy from food for other activities too. So even burning just 3 pringles will be good, in fact, much better than 0 pringles at all. The point is, in the end you will be a tad fitter, and your effort surely did not go to waste even though you didn't lose that any weight!

Baltic Fleet- I will also be forwarding to my mum! Dieting seems so old fashioned and just...wrong to me. Why can't people just eat mostly healthy food, and when they really feel like it, partake in something inefficient like a cookie? What always makes me laugh are the commercials on TV advertising lower calorie soup or yogurt. You eat food because you need fuel, aka calories. If your yogurt has half the calories you require at the time, you're still going to be hungry! It just makes the yogurt less efficient! I used to work with someone who always dieted and would complain that she was hungry after only having lettuce for lunch. Once I suggested she eat some almonds and she said, "but almonds have calories!" Hence why you should eat them...

Eat for living, or live for eating, your choice,
One meal a day is for the day with longer voices,
Four meals a day is for the day and lots of noises,
You are what you eat, they say, but, that's the point.

I wonder if the results would have been the same if men had been the subjects of the study.

In short, the issue is about finding a psychological tactic that preserves your discipline.

Do not reduce calories.
Change the consumption pattern.
70% fat. 15% carbohydrates, 15% protein. Paleo diet.
Fat may be butter or ghee and coconut oil. Avoid all vegetable oils including olive oil.
My BP and sugar levels have dropped and my weight has come down.
For elaboration see paleonu.com.

My friend lost 140 lbs in overeaters anonymous and has kept it off for 7 years. This is an amazing feat because most obese people, especially morbidly obese people, may lose weight but more often than not do not keep it off.

Obesity is caused by people eating more food than their body needs. We know this, we need to get down to causes and conditions. Ask yourself why you are truly trying to commit suicide via eating. We should focus on the SOURCE of the issue not just the SYMPTOM.