Losing Weight and Gaining it Back Again: Why Diets Don’t Work

Reader’s Question

Can you explain the psychology behind someone’s losing a bunch of weight, and then immediately gaining it back again? I have unfortunately done this many times, always saying that I was changing my lifestyle forever. But after being successful for awhile, I fall back into my old ways and gain back all the weight I lost.

Is there any hope for me that I might eventually lose it all once and forever?

Psychologist’s Reply

Before getting into an explanation for why diets don’t work and how difficult it is to really change a lifestyle, let’s discuss some important facts that can help clarify the reasons most people have problems maintaining an ideal weight.

Obesity is a fairly widespread phenomenon, especially in Western cultures. It is a primary culprit in a variety of lifestyle-related diseases including diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and stroke. Obesity in the Western world is primarily the result of a fat-rich, nutrition-deficient diet that is often exacerbated by personal constitutional predispositions.

For most of human history, finding and storing adequate sources of food was a constant and difficult enterprise. Food was nowhere near as plentiful as it is today. Also, life was much harder, and human activity levels were much higher. Those individuals with slower metabolisms and who could store a fair amount of what they were able to consume survived, while those who had faster metabolisms might even have perished. In modern times, food not only became plentiful and packed with useless calories, but also activity levels sharply dropped, making obesity an epidemic just waiting to happen.

It’s a simple axiom that you can lose weight by simply eating fewer calories than you burn. That’s the heart of “dieting.” But in the long run diets don’t work for a lot of reasons:

  • First, deprivation is something a person can endure for only so long. Eventually a person wants to “reward” themselves by ending the deprivation and re-nourishing. So, the weight comes back.
  • Second, over-eating often has its roots in some emotional needs that are frequently not addressed and take an even further back-burner status when the person diets. These needs can then become overpowering, propelling the person not only to break the diet but also to gorge after the diet is broken.
  • Third, it’s really difficult to change a lifestyle. Patterns of eating and exercise that have developed over many years are difficult to change and maintain.

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(Please read our important explanation below.)

The real secret to success in changing your lifestyle to a healthier one of greater physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual fitness is to commit yourself to a program of change that evolves slowly but consistently. Changing your diet slowly to consist of fewer high-fat, low-nutrition foods and more foods rich in fiber, antioxidants, and key nutrients is important, naturally. But making slow and steady changes in your level of exercise, and devoting time to your emotional and spiritual needs is important, too. It’s the overall balance that really matters.

Most of us panic at the thought of our present condition and want to see miracles overnight. People who have successfully changed and maintained their lifestyles have done so slowly and methodically. They therefore both achieved and maintained their results over a longer period of time.

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