Most people would associate ‘going on a diet’ as a positive step. A step towards a healthier slimmer you.

What if I told you that most people who go on a diet eventually end up in a worse position that when they start?

Here’s 10 reasons why:

1. Diets pretty much always have an end point. Many of them are unrealistic and can’t be maintained. What happens after you’ve got to day 14/21/28? Normally people go back to their normal way of eating and worse as they’ve restricted themselves for the past few weeks.
2. It’s all about weight. The key focus should be on ridding yourself of body fat not just weight.
3. They’re Too Extreme. Most diets due to their restrictive approach mean you lose weight very quickly… too quickly. Doing this puts your body into fat preserving mode which raises cortisol levels and drops thyroid hormones = bad!
4. They Eat Away Muscle. Another downside of aggressive diets is you lose muscle within the weight loss. This muscle is a vital piece in the fat burning jigsaw so this is bad news again. I read from Phil Richards that low calorie diets of 800-1200 calories per day can use up to 45% of muscle tissue for energy.
5. They Don’t Promote Long Term Change. Who’s going to eat cabbage soup forever or eat no carbohydrates whatsoever? Dieting does nothing for creating good nutritional habits. The focus should be on eating natural, healthy foods made up of fats, proteins and carbs.
6. They Release Harmful Toxins. Harmful toxins which were stored in the body fat get released which lowers our fat burning potential.
7. They Slow Metabolism. The faster your metabolism is the more fat you will burn. When the metabolism slows down not only do you burn less fat but your body will store more as it goes into starvation mode. So after you come off the diet and start eating badly you’ll store even more fat than before.
8. They Can Interfere With Everyday Life. If you’re eating a low calorie or low carb diet your energy levels are shot. I’ve had a couple of clients not be able to finish a session and after quizzing them I find they’re on some crazy diet which depletes their energy. Low energy = harder to exercise and more likely to eat bad foods to try and combat it.
9. Increased Insulin Sensitivity. Fast weight loss increases insulin sensitivity which can make you extremely prone to weight regain afterwards.
10. It’s Rushed. How many diets have you heard of that promise you’ll lose 1 stone in 2 months? Not many. People don’t seem to want to wait two months to lose a stone, they want it straight away. Once/if they hit their target they are so weak and depleted that the only thing for them to do is to binge and gain back the weight.

So I hope this is enough to make you think twice about trying one of these crash diets.

What to do then?

Take your time, be patient, exercise, eat well balanced healthy, tasty foods which fill you up and you’ll be fine. 

Take care,

Jamie ‘No More Stupid Diets’ Stedman

PS I don’t want to put anyone off with this post or offend anyone. I know many if not most readers will have all been on these diets. Maybe they do work for some but for the majority agressive diets come hand in hand with the problems I mentioned above.