Diets Make Us Fatter!

How does dieting make us fat? Isn’t this the thing we most often do to LOSE weight? Yes, it is. And the rising obesity rates in this country are a shining example of just how unsuccessful diets are at accomplishing their aim. Weight loss that is not permanent is not weight loss at all. Let me explain how this really works.

The body is a fabulous machine. We can train it to do just about anything. What we don’t realize is that we train it to do things we never anticipate. For example, let’s say you have 10 pounds to lose. Your body is used to receiving 2500 calories of fuel per day from you. You cut 1000 calories a day from your diet. Do you lose weight? Yes, you do. Then you stop dieting.

Your body was expecting to get 2500 calories per day, but you only gave it 1500. You starved it into submission. It doesn’t like being starved, so it learns that in order to be happy and maintain the weight it is used to, it needs to slow down it’s metabolic rate. If you give it less calories, it will slow down even more and burn fewer calories. And it protects itself from future "starvation" by storing as many calories as it can, and it stores them as fat. You gain back the weight you lost, and you quickly gain a few more. It’s the body’s way of giving itself a cushion against the starvation strategy you are forcing on it.

In essence, you originally had 10 pounds to lose, you dieted, which turned out to be the wrong course of action, you regained the weight back along with a few additional pounds, and now you have 12 or 13 pounds to lose. This diet caused a net GAIN of 2-3 pounds. So you find a new diet. You repeat the same procedure and you lose 10 pounds, but you lose it more slowly because your body is now fighting you all the way. You become frustrated and give up the diet, regain this 10 pounds and a few more for good measure. You’ve now been on two diets and have a net gain of 5-6 pounds.

Can you see where this is leading? Soon you are trying one diet after the next, and several diets per year can cause you a net weight GAIN of 10-15 or even 20 pounds…Ten years of this and you’ve become morbidly obese.

Stop dieting! You are only injuring yourself in the process. Even the very word "diet" is mentally equated with deprivation. It’s time you quit looking for the magic diet bullet and started making meaningful progress in your pursuit of a normal, healthy body! M.E.