We’re already halfway through February yet the New Year’s onslaught of diet ads continues.
If feels like no matter what I watch or listen to these days—and I consume a wide variety of content—I’m bombarded with messages from diet companies claiming to have finally found the solution for successful weight loss (and hence everlasting health and happiness, of course).
It’s Not a “Diet”
In an attempt to be more appealing and acceptable to today’s consumers, especially those who feel they have “failed” with traditional diets (or watched their parents do so), most diet companies are careful to claim their offerings aren’t diets but rather “wellness plans,” “lifestyle changes” or “psychology-based programs.”
Yet, they offer pretty much the same old stuff perhaps with a few new bells and whistles thrown in.
If a program tells you what, how much and/or when you’re allowed to eat, it’s a diet.
If it includes counting calories/points/macros, categorizing food, cutting out foods, logging exercise and tracking your weight, it's a diet.
I want to scream when the dieters/actors in these ads exclaim how easy it’s been to lose X pounds in just X weeks.
The truth is, you can lose weight on almost any diet, no matter what it’s called.
What the diet companies don’t tell you, however, is there is only about a five-percent chance you will maintain your weight loss.
They also don’t tell you it’s likely you’ll regain more weight than you lost as up to two-thirds of dieters typically do.*
So much for the “life-long” or “permanent” results they often promise to deliver!
One has to wonder how they even go about tracking their “lifetime” results.
Warning: Potential Side Effects
In addition to rebound weight gain, following are some of the other potential side effects of dieting you aren’t warned about:
Leads to harmful food rules, disordered eating and eating disorders
Increases food obsession and body preoccupation
Triggers intense cravings and binge-like eating
Reduces your ability to recognize and honor your hunger and fullness cues
Makes you scared to eat in situations where you won’t have complete control over the food
Causes you to miss out on shared eating experiences with family and friends
Drives you to sneak food and eat in secret
Makes you afraid to keep certain foods in your house out of a fear of losing control with them
Brings about mood swings and emotional eating
Provokes feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, fear and hopelessness
Erodes body trust, self-trust, self-esteem and confidence
Results in weight cycling (yo-yo dieting), which can lead to adverse health conditions
Slows your metabolism
Increases your hunger-signaling hormone while decreasing your fullness-signaling hormone
Raises your cortisol level because dieting is inherently stressful
Encourages a disordered relationship with exercise
Consumes most of your time, energy and headspace, while other parts of your life suffer, like your relationships, social life, career and hobbies
If you have a history of dieting, you’re likely quite familiar with many of these outcomes.
It’s also likely you’ve blamed yourself and your lack of willpower and self-discipline when a diet didn’t work.
Please understand this: You don’t fail a diet—a diet fails you!
Never Be Allowed
Imagine if diet companies, like drug manufacturers, had to include all of the potential side effects of dieting in their advertisements.
Here's what the originators of Intuitive Eating, Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, have to say about the futility of dieting and the harm it can cause:
“If dieting programs had to stand up to the same scrutiny as medication, they would never be allowed for public consumption. Imagine, for example, taking an asthma medication, which improves your breathing for a few weeks, but in the long run, causes your lungs and breathing to worsen.”
Become Fully Informed
When you’re unhappy with your eating and your body, the success stories promoted in the diet ads can understandably tempt you to try one more diet.
I get it. I’ve been there myself.
The desire to diet and lose weight is completely understandable given our weight-stigmatizing, thin-idolizing culture, our tendency to conflate weight with health, and the illusion of control dieting provides in a world full of uncertainty.
While I am anti-diet, I completely believe in body autonomy including the right to diet.
I also believe people should be made aware of the physical and psychological harm dieting can cause so they can make a fully informed decision about what’s truly best for their overall wellbeing. It’s unethical to do otherwise.
If you’re considering participating in an intentional weight loss program, I encourage you to do your research.
Look for solid scientific data demonstrating a program leads to long-term, sustainable weight loss (i.e., multiple years versus a few months) for the majority of its participants—without causing any adverse side effects or requiring constant self-monitoring.
Don’t be surprised, however, if you discover it doesn’t exist!
Dieting Won’t Bring You Peace and Wellbeing
If you want a healthy, peaceful relationship with food and your body, despite what the $72 billion diet industry wants you to believe, it can’t be achieved through dieting.
Rather than put all your energy toward depriving yourself for a short-term result with potentially harmful long-term consequences, what if you put it towards healing your relationship with food and your body, reclaiming your ability to eat intuitively, and engaging in weight-neutral self-care so you can truly experience the peace, ease and wellbeing you’re longing for?
*For a deep dive into the research behind these stats, I recommend checking out Christy Harrison’s book Anti-Diet.
