Why Your Diet Has Failed You (You Haven't Failed Your Diet)

Why Your Diet Has Failed You (You Haven't Failed Your Diet)

Sarah Grant
Intuitive eating, Body confidence, Diet Culture

Have you experienced this cycle - the one where you start a new diet regime with enthusiasm and high hopes, only to find yourself back at square one (within days, weeks or months), feeling defeated and blaming yourself for not having enough willpower? Perhaps you’ve dieted on and off for years only to never achieve weight loss, or you’ve witnessed your weight going up?

What if the problem isn't you? What if the failure lies within dieting?

An overwhelming but under-publicised body of research studies reveals that around 75% of people who lose weight on diets, put it back on again, and that dieting is a significant predictor of future weight gain.

In this blog, I have a look at what’s really going on with the rollercoaster that is dieting, and offer some guidance about how to break free from dieting and find more stability in your approach to food and your body.

WHAT COUNTS AS A DIET?

First, the term ‘diet’ can encompass a wide range of eating patterns and practices. However, I’m not talking about the daily diet of a ‘normative’ eater. A ‘diet’ includes any dietary approach that involves calorie restriction, macronutrient restriction, food group elimination, controlled meal timing and frequency, structured pre-defined meal plans pre-defined meal plan often provided by a diet program or nutritionist, short-term detoxes and cleanses aimed, and ‘fad’ diets usually aimed at very quick weight loss.

Regardless of the type, most diets share common characteristics:

  • Restriction: Limiting certain foods, food groups, or overall calorie intake.

  • Rules: Clear guidelines about what and/or when to eat.

  • Goal-oriented: Aimed at achieving specific outcomes such as intentional weight loss or detoxification.

Consider that even ‘healthy eating’ can be turned into a diet if taken too far and it starts taking on these characteristics.

It’s also relevant to mention that people can adopt specific diets or dietary modifications to help support specific health conditions. Medical or therapeutic dietary interventions are often, but not always, short-term, and should be undertaken with the personalised support of a qualified nutrition professional. That said, as a Nutritional Therapist myself, I believe that unless there is medical reason, or evidence to suggest otherwise, therapeutic dietary changes should focus on positive supportive nutrition and involve as little restriction as possible.

SO, WHY DO DIETS FAIL?

The body says no

When it comes to diets to drive intentional weight loss, a fact that isn’t widely acknowledged or accepted is that is almost impossible to force our bodies to do things they’re not made to do in the long-term.

Yes, of course bodies will fluctuate naturally, and their size, shape or weight can respond to behaviours we engage in. But intentionally trying to manipulate body weight outside of the natural weight range that it strives to maintain by itself, known as the set-point, is unlikely to be successful for many reasons, and may be detrimental to health.

Research published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2011) by Fothergill et al. followed participants who underwent a calorie-restricted diet for six months, followed by a weight-maintenance phase. The study found that participants experienced significant metabolic adaptation during weight loss, including decreased resting metabolic rate and increased hunger hormones, which persisted throughout the weight maintenance phase. This metabolic slowdown makes it harder to sustain weight loss over time.

In a landmark study published in the American Journal of Physiology (1995), Leibel et al. investigated the biological mechanisms underlying weight regain after diet-induced weight loss. The researchers found that after losing weight, participants experienced changes in appetite-regulating hormones, such as leptin and ghrelin, that promoted increased hunger and reduced energy expenditure, making weight regain almost inevitable.

When someone sells you a weight loss diet, they probably won’t tell you that the body has these strong preservation mechanisms to protect against what it perceives to be starvation, which will at some point kick and are likely to undo your efforts and potentially leave you in a trickier position than before you started dieting.

The mind says no

Diets don’t just impact your body, they can also take a significant toll on your mental wellbeing and energy. The constant monitoring of food, the stress of avoiding certain foods, and the disappointment of not seeing long-term results can lead to feelings of failure and low self-esteem.

Dieting can also create an unhealthy preoccupation with food, where thoughts of eating dominate your mind, and emotional eating and overeating are more likely. A study published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology (2007) by Lowe and colleagues examined the psychological effects of dieting on women. The researchers found that restrictive dieting was associated with increased levels of depression, anxiety, and binge eating behaviours, highlighting the negative impact of chronic dieting on mental health.

The emotional burden of restrictive eating, especially when combined with the physical stress of calorie deficit, may also increase the body's production of cortisol, the stress hormone. Elevated cortisol levels are linked to weight gain and overtime may lead to health issues like high blood pressure and blood sugar levels.

DIETING TRIGGERS A VICIOUS CYCLE

Restriction - or the loss of physical and mental flexibility around food and eating - is at the core of why diets fail. But unless you understand this, and that you are not at personal fault when you can’t stick to your diet or change your weight at will, it can be too easy to get stuck in a vicious cycle of going on and off diets for many years.

Yo-yo dieting, also known as weight cycling, involves a repetitive pattern of losing weight through restrictive dieting and subsequently regaining it, often with added pounds. This cycle can repeat multiple times, leading to significant fluctuations in body weight. It typically begins with an individual embarking on a restrictive diet to lose weight, achieving initial success. However, maintaining such a diet proves challenging due to various physiological and psychological factors, leading to weight regain and the continuation of the cycle.

The health risks associated with yo-yo dieting are substantial. Each cycle of weight loss and regain slows down the body’s basal metabolic rate (BMR), making it progressively harder to lose weight and easier to accumulate fat, particularly around the abdomen. Additionally, yo-yo dieting is associated with elevated blood pressure, increased levels of LDL cholesterol, and a higher risk of heart disease and stroke.

The psychological toll includes feelings of frustration, failure, decreased self-esteem, and an increased risk of anxiety, depression, and disordered eating behaviours.

Breaking the diet cycle

So, what can you do if you find yourself in this cycle and dieting is failing you?

Intuitive Eating is an evidence-based approach to eating for self-care that can reconnect you with your innate eating wisdom, empowering you to rebuild your ability to trust yourself around food and to trust your body to find its own natural happy place.

Intuitive Eating enables you to develop, or restore, a healthy relationship with food, and promotes health-promoting eating and self-care behaviours, regardless of the potential impact on body weight. The polar opposite of a diet, it focusses on freedom around food, wellbeing, self-compassion and nurturing body respect.

Because our relationships with foods are so entwined with the relationship we have with our bodies, and dissatisfaction with body weight is of course a major driver to start dieting, working on building more acceptance, flexibility, neutrality and resilience around body image typically goes hand in hand with Intuitive Eating.

If you like the sound of this approach, but are struggling to connect with it because you have been lead to believe you need to achieve a normal weight on the BMI scale in order to be healthy, there is also plenty of evidence emerging that reveals this is not necessarily true. Rest-assured that it is engaging in health-promoting behaviours that can directly support positive health outcomes. In fact, the studies on Intuitive Eating show how adopting this approach can result in improved health risk indicators.

My Conclusions

To-date, very few long-term scientific research studies exist that demonstrate that it is possible to lose weight and successfully maintain that loss, and those that have shown some ‘success’ in this area highlight how challenging this can be outside of the container of a supported programme. I know this may feel disturbing, but there is no diet that can promise long-term sustained weight loss for the majority of its participants. 

Diets often fail because they are based on restriction which can trigger food preoccupation and feeling out of control around food, as well disrupt the body’s natural balance leading to metabolic and hormonal changes that drive the body back to its set point, or even higher.

By having awareness of the inherently flawed nature of dieting, we can understand that the problem lies not with our individual bodies, personal willpower or discipline, but with the so-called diets endlessly promoted in many guises by the weight-loss industry, and to some extent the wellness industry. So, if you have fallen into the diet trap, you are definitely not alone.

However, it is totally possible to break free from the dieting rollercoaster and embrace a more holistic and sustainable approach to eating for health and wellbeing. If you would like to explore getting some support on your journey to improving your food and body confidence, then please reach out and book a free enquiry call with me.

Take a nourishing step forward today

Are worries about food, weight, or overeating draining your time, energy, and peace of mind? Are you struggling with low mood, food cravings, gut health, or digestion challenges?

Old mindsets and habits can be hard to shift on your own. If you are looking to reset your eating patterns, make peace with your body, and reclaim your energy, I can help you.

Please check out my private programmes here, or contact me for an exploratory chat to find out more.

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