WHY DO DIETS FAIL?
Maybe you’re not falling off the wagon. Maybe the wagon is breaking down.
Dieting is hard. It goes against everything our brain is programmed to do. We are designed to seek out food and survive. Our brains and bodies work in perfect harmony to pack on every pound and find the most calorically dense food available. But delicious high calorie foods are everywhere! Why can’t we manage to successfully take off a few pounds?
Our brains are constantly in overdrive with the daily stress of modern life and our bodies are only reacting to what they percieve as a threat. We actively seek a quick dopamine hit to assuage our battered central nervous systems. Additionally, the moment we reduce our calories below our maintenance level, is the moment our bodies step up to the plate to start down-regulating the mechanisms that enable us to burn calories. It seems like a lose lose situation. Put simply, our bodies DO NOT want to lose weight.
The purpose of this article is not to offer yet another voice to the plethora of voices offering diet advice. Rather, I am here to offer a voice of reason and comfort to those individuals who struggle to successfully shed unwanted weight.
- You are not weak.
- You are not alone.
- It isn’t your fault.
Being a personal trainer, I may get a lot of negative feedback for making such bold claims. I’ll gladly take that feedback and tell the naysayers where to put it. I’ll say it again for the people in the back. Dieting is hard! Neither our bodies, nor our brains, are programmed to willfully restrict calories. We are a species hell-bent on surviving and thriving. We have mechanism after mechanism buried deep within our circuitry designed to help us find food and store fat to. If you’re struggling to lose weight, congratulations! You’re a survivor. However, that status comes with a multitude of risks as well. Type II diabetes, cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attack risk, stroke risk; and, if that didn’t cover it, all-cause mortality.
Just because your survival instincts are as sharp as ever, doesn’t mean that holding extra weight is a life sentence. It is important to keep in mind that your health and fitness program spans your entire life; not just a “21-day fix”, or a 6-week shred. You just have to learn to be more patient, more moderate, and gentler in your approach.
I drill the following mantra into my client’s heads from day one:
“Health and Fitness Programs are like a pendulum. The harder you swing, the harder you’ll swing back.”
Pop culture would have us all eating 1200 calorie a day diets, hitting the gym 6 days a week, and rocking a 6 pack 365 days a year. GET REAL! Happy healthy humans don’t do/need any of that. I would argue that setting that gold standard is doing far more harm than good. We might want a 6-pack, sure, but we don’t hang our whole lives on maintaining the physique of a Greco-roman statue. Honestly, were someone to tell me to eat 1200 calories a day, I would ask if that was just for breakfast and laugh in their face.
In closing, be human. Don’t get down on yourself when you struggle to conform to the gold standard of dieting. Don’t allow yourself to feel like a failure. Chances are good, it’s not you; it’s the diet. When your body picks up the threat, it springs into action to save you. Pat yourself on the back for that; then stop focusing on drastic weight loss measures. Focus on loving yourself, being the HEALTHIEST version of yourself, and cut the bulls***. When you put yourself above fads, trends, and the gold standard it’s amazing what you can do. Stretch marks, bat wings, jelly rolls, and wrinkles are part of life. Love yourself and move on.
Just putting thoughts to “paper”…
Stay Buff,
-E