Diets Don’t Work

What a lifetime has taught me

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

I find it hard to accept that I’ll never be thin again. My menopausal body will forever carry extra weight, will always be wiggly and jiggly, and no amount of dieting will change that.

I’ve spent a lifetime watching out for the newest weight loss information, the newest nutrition information, and the newest way of maintaining the weight loss. I watched my mom diet, lose weight, get fatter, diet again, lose weight again, get even fatter, over and over again. I’ve followed the same insidious cycle.

Here’s a few things I’ve learned about dieting over the decades:

A diet will never work

No diet, not Weight Watchers, not intermittent fasting, not Keto plans, nothing, will ever work long term. The only thing diets do is make me fatter. Every time, every single time, without fail, I’ve lost weight and then gained it all back, plus some. It doesn’t matter which diet plan I tried, I ended up heavier than before I started.

By restricting my eating and ‘jump starting’ my new diet, all I’m doing is creating a world where I’ll binge eat at some point. I’ll be ‘good’ and stick to the plan, but then realize this plan isn’t sustainable in the long run and revert back to my old eating habits.

The diet industry is an industry designed to make money off people

New plans pop up constantly with new success stories to back them up. But what they fail to mention is that almost nobody keeps the weight off for five years or longer. Seriously, about one in a thousand will keep the weight off. That’s 999 of 1000 that won’t.

The industry would crumble if people were actually successful and stayed at their goal weight. There’d be no need for new diet plans or new programs.

Exercise isn’t the key to weight loss

There’s just not enough time in the day to pedal off a slice of pizza or yoga the cookie calories away.

Don’t get me wrong — moving my body is good. We’re built to move and so any amount of exercise is good. But to rely solely on working out as a method of weight loss leads to exhaustion and failure.