Dieting and Weight Loss Study
Robin mentioned reading about a meta-study about weightloss programs, and I found an article about it in the scotsman. Basically, it says that diets are useless, and the only useful weight loss comes through more exercise. The article asks, why do we diet, when we just gain the wait back again?
I'll tell you why we do it. The hint comes down in ( Read more... )
Also, eating "good" foods (or not eating "bad" foods) doesn't make you lose weight. It's healthy to eat "good" foods, and "bad" foods tend to have more calories per appetite-reduction "unit". But "eating right" doesn't directly influence weight. The most weight-reducing diet I ever went on, actually, was the "don't eat dinner" diet. It was the easiest way to get my system used to having fewer calories in the day (because the evening time was the easiest time to be hungry).
I have generally found, though, that I can't lose weight while working, because being hungry really makes it hard to function at work. I also get both more stressed and more bored, and therefore hungry. Not to mention that I don't have time or energy to work out much. Being a student has been much better.
But there also seems to be another problem, which I think relates back to the first part of my comment. There certainly seem to be "barrier" weights which are difficult to cross. One can lose 5 or 10 kg and then get stuck around one point for months, even though they're eating the same, exercising the same, etc. My theory is that for a certain person, a certain lifestyle has an "equilibrium" point, and more changes are needed to pass it.
Coming back around to my original post, I think people try dieting because it shows direct result for short-term effort. But there are two problems with this: first, the diet is often simply not sustainable, sometimes for good reasons - even psychological ones (an acquaintance told me that she swore off chocolate for a month, but then she stopped, because she discovered that the loss of this enjoyment made her a much nastier person). The second problem is that even if the diet itself is sustainable, it will not result in sustained weight loss.
Increasing activity level is actually much easier in the long-term than making diet "sacrifices". But it requires up-front rearrangement of the daily schedule and shows very little short-term result. In addition, any kind of weight loss generally results in lower energy (during the weight loss period; being more physically fit will actually make you more energetic), and when you have low energy, it is easier (in the short term) to sit around hungry than to go out and move.
When it comes to dieting products and services, of course, there's a great market because they can show short-term success while blaming you for the lack of success in the long term. The problem is that the long term is frequently simply not sustainable.
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