You heard me right! They Never Have! They Never Do! They Never Will!
The
Diet Industry is a 40 Billion Dollar Industry filled with misinformation.
96% of people who go on
diets can't stay on them to reach their desired goal.
98% of people who go on
diets gain the weight they lose back + 5 extra pounds. (National Institute of Health)
50% of Americans are on a
diet at any given time yet 70% of Americans are overweight and 30% are obese.
My Story
When I was in my late teens I took up bodybuilding and after a couple of years I began competing. A typical year consisted of me gaining fifty or more pounds in the off season by eating lots of food and then
dieting and loosing fifty or so pounds over the next few months as I prepared for the competition. After doing this for six years I stopped competing in bodybuilding. Over the following years I continued to gain fifty or so pounds a year and then go on a
diet and lose all or most of it over the following months. I became an expert and gaining weight and loosing weight. I became an expert
dieter. I could lose weight on the Atkins, Stillman, Scarsdale or any other
diet. I was master of the low calorie, low fat and low carbohydrate
diets. The only problem that once I lost the weight I couldn't keep it off and eventually would gain it all back plus some. I eventually ended up gaining and losing almost a thousand pounds. After giving up on
dieting I began researching why people gain weight and why
diets don't work. After spending over five years researching why
diets don't work and discovering what does work when it comes to loosing weight and keeping it off. I began applying the principles I discovered and today I am celebrating over ten years at a body weight that hasn't fluctuated more then five pounds up or down.
Why
Diets Don't Work
Fact #1:
Diets are downers. People hate to
diet. Have you ever met anyone on a
diet that liked it? Does anyone like doing anything with the word DIE in it? When I went on
diets I hated it. It made me unhappy and depressed.
Fact #2:
Dieting slows your metabolism. The longer you
diet the slower your metabolism gets causing you to eat less and less until your weight loss stops entirely. Then when you resume normal eating the weight quickly returns + extra pounds due to it taking months for the metabolism to return to normal. Then guess what? You need to go onto another
diet.
Dieting simply is a way to create an artificial famine. Your body doesn't know that it's a
diet. All it knows is that its in a famine. So it slows the metabolism as much as 40%. If you naturally need 2000 calories a day to sustain your current body weight and go on a
diet where you are consuming 1000 calories a day your metabolism will get lower and lower to say 40% or 1200 calories below its natural level of 2000 calories. At that point weight lose is minimal and extremely difficult. Then when you return to eating 2000 calories a day which is what the majority of people do you begin adding 800 extra calories daily. That's 800 calories about 1.75 pounds of fat per week.
When I was on the
dieting roller coaster I'd lose 50 pounds in six months and go off it and gain all the weight back over the next six months. One thing I noticed was that as soon as I'd go off the
diet the weight would quickly come back due to my metabolism having slowed due to the
dieting.
Fact 3:
Diets offer a poor temporary fix What's really needed is a lifestyle change. The only people who lose weight and keep it off are the people who change their lifestyle once and for all. Changing your lifestyle is easier then
dieting and far more rewarding.
I used to go on
diets knowing that they were only a quick fix. After losing hundreds of pounds and gaining it back convinced me that
dieting could never able me to sustain the weight lose.
Dieting was just a superficial way of treating symptoms instead of the cause of my weight gain.
Fact 4: Since 96% of people who go on
diets gain the weight they've lost back plus some the next time they
diet it gets a little harder to lose weight. With each never
dieting round the body becomes more resilient to giving up the weight and
dieting gets tougher and tougher. With each new
diet I went on it became more and more difficult to get the weight off. Finally after years of yo-yo
dieting It became almost impossible to get the weight off
dieting.
Fact 5:
Diets fail to deal with the things that cause people to overeat. People overeat due to a number of psychological reasons. Some overeat because they fail to eat consciously. After years of eating on the run, in the front of the television or while stuffing a hot dog into their mouth while driving down the highway; they eat like dogs never stopping to taste, savor and enjoy the food their eating.
Another thing that causes people to overeat is previous conditioning that can go back to their childhood. As a child I was told to clean my plate because children were starving in Africa. I was also told that if I didn't clean my plate I couldn't have desert. The experts in my life conditioned me to eat every scrape on my plate even if I was stuffed. They conditioned me to overeat. Something that took me years to understand and change.
Fact 6:
Dieting Causes Eating Disorders. People who get onto the
dieting roller coaster can develop eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia.
Dieting serves as a precursor to these illnesses.
During my weight gain and
dieting cycles I frequently would binge and after the binge think nothing of purging while standing over the toilet. I eventually got pretty good at it and could down five burgers and a dozen Dunken Donuts and drop them in the toilet only to be back eating fifteen minutes later.
Fact 7:
Dieting Causes Obesity.
Dieting slows down the metabolism making it harder and harder to lose weight. Eventually the metabolism slows to a crawl and even a well balanced healthy
diet causes the person to gain weight. Have you ever seen an obese person who says, "I don't eat a lot and continue to gain weight." They may be telling the truth. After years of
dieting their metabolism is running slow and low making it really easy to keep on adding the pounds.
You would think that in America with all the
diets,
diet pills, and
diet centers that we would be the thinnest country on the globe. But instead we are the fattest and getting fatter every year. With all the
dieting I was doing and all the expertise on
dieting I was gaining I still just kept getting fatter.
Fact 8:
Diets cause starvation or semi starvation. Starvation occurs at 900 calories or less that's when you start to die. Most
diets are in that range. Starvation plays havoc with the systems of the body and brain and if continued will cause permanent damage. When faced with starvation your body will do everything it can to survive. Things like slowing your metabolism to conserve energy and creating intense hunger to drive you to find food. When I was
dieting I has hungry all the time. I didn't know it at the time but I was starving. I was putting my body through what people in famines go through.
Fact 9:
Diets damage your body and cause disease. Studies show that ongoing
dieting causes heart disease, osteoporosis, gall stones, high blood pressure, anemia, constipation, kidney stones, dry skin, hair lose, depression, anxiety.
When I was on the
dieting roller coaster I would frequently get sick. I would get frequent colds, the flu, tonsillitis, sinusitis, and constipation was a daily experience. Over the past ten years I've had two colds.
Fact 10:
Dieting Causes Malnutrition.
Dieting restricts people from getting the necessary macro and micro nutrients. Not getting these nutrients causes damage to our bodies and results in sickness. I didn't know It back when I was
dieting that the main reason why I was getting sick so frequently was that I was suffering from malnutrition. I simply wasn't getting the nutrients that me body needed.
Fact 11: We don't fail at
dieting,
diets fail us.
Diets simply don't work. Every person who ever quit
dieting or gained the weight they lost back did so due to the fact that
diets are built upon false premises. If you build a house upon a foundation of straw it will crumble.
Diets are built upon a foundation of straw.
While on the dieing roller coaster I continuously felt like a failure. I struggled to stick to the
diets I would go on and always gained the weight back. I felt like a frustrated failure. I didn't know at the time that I wasn't the failure but that the entire
diet industry and everyone of their
diets was a failure.
Fact 12:
Diets Cause Death. The name
Diet fits well.
Dieting shortens your life span.
Diets cause a number of problems that lead to sickness, disease and eventually death.
Had I not discovered the truth I likely would have
dieted myself to death. I am eternally grateful for discovering the truth. For the truth truly set me free.
Why
Diets Don't Work
1.
Diets treat superficial symptoms instead of causes.
2.
Diets cause major deprivation. You deprive yourself of food. Not only food, but food that you like. This drives people crazy. When I used to
diet all I did day and night was think about food. When I wasn't
dieting I thought about other stuff like the geo-political situations in the world and sex. But while on the
diet I just thought about Italian bread, pasta, and cannoli's.
To Your Health!
Dave Thomas