Dieting Doesn't Work
"You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."
"What happens to people on diets in the long run?" Mann asked. "Would they have been better off to not go on a diet at all? We decided to dig up and analyze every study that followed people on diets for two to five years. We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back." More from Dieting doesn't work
Dieting only works when combined with exercise and lifestyle changes. In most overweight cases, food isn't the only culprit. Gaining weight is most likely associated with changes of behavior or one's personal life. For me, it was the combination of stress, sleep deprivation and overworking. Food often serves as a means that we use to comfort ourselves. If we don't find the root cause, the pounds taken off by a diet can come back with a vengence. This weight loss program has a good explaination on how to combine dieting with exercise and behavioral changes to accomplish weight loss goals.
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1 Comments:
The study also found that often the dieters ended up gaining more weight (above their starting weight) in the long run than people who did not diet. Having yo-yo dieted myself several times, I think a big reason diets don't work is that they are too restrictive and are not something you can do for a lifetime, and after dieting you tend to go overboard with your eating to compensate for the strictness. I think that it is not only important to exercise and address the root causes of overeating as you have mentioned, but to also not do anything to lose the weight that you are not prepared to do for a lifetime.
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Amy Vallery, at 10:55 PM
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