Happy New Year! 2016 is just beginning and that means (dun dun duuuun) New Year’s Resolutions!
I don’t know if any of you get the urge to poll people. Sometimes, I want to know why everyone is exiting the freeway. Is there something I don’t know about? A super sale? A special event? A dinosaur up ahead destroying Los Angeles?
In January, I want to know who has made a New Year’s resolution, what it is, and what they intend to do to keep that resolution past February 1st. Did you resolve to lose weight, exercise more, fit into a certain pair of jeans, drink green juices, or never let a piece of delicious chocolate pass your lips ever again?
I’m going to take a gander that millions of Americans just put themselves on a diet, something along the lines of less food, more exercise, no dessert, some sort of list of “ok” and “not ok” foods, and a bunch of rules.
I’m also going to make the (not-so-risky) prediction that for almost everyone who starts this kind of diet, they will:
I’m not here to dash your hopes of weight loss to the ground. What I’m saying is that diets are not the way to lasting weight loss and, in fact, they do more harm to your body, weight and metabolism.
Here’s how.
Diets are inherently made to fail. If you don’t believe me, how do you think the weight loss industry maintains it’s multi-billion dollar status each year. If diets work, then they should go out of business because everyone who goes on a diet will lose their weight and keep it off. Instead, diets are made to NOT work so that you will continue to need books, expensive rabbit food, magical elixirs, pills and potions and other nonsense to try to reach your ever elusive goals.
The problems with diets are simple. Here are a few illustrations of how things can go from bad to worse very quickly:
Here’s another common scenario:
And if I haven’t been convincing enough, here’s one more:
All these cycles end up with you ending the diet, being upset at yourself (instead of the stupid diet), and weighing the same as when you started the diet (or more) but now also being self-critical, discouraged, angry, etc.
Instead of joining in this crazy making, I hope that you will consider a diet-free approach to weight loss. If you want to learn more about how to lose weight WITHOUT dieting, check out posts that I’ve written on the topic here, here, here and here, listen to these podcast episodes here, here, here and here, or drop me a line!
Here’s to a New Year free of diets and craziness!
[…] for the sake of health promote anything but health. As I’ve discussed before on my podcast and in other posts, diets, restriction, rigid food rules and shame all create a perfect storm for deleterious health […]