We have all heard the phrase, “Diets don’t work”. But how often has anyone explained to you why “diets don’t work”? Probably never. Well get ready, because we are about to explain why diets do not work. Once you know why they do not work, you will be able to find the eating plan that will help you lose weight and keep it off.
Diets do not work, everyone knows it, but that does not stop people from trying to diet. And yet, somehow, if diets do not work, some people do lose weight and manage to keep it off for years or forever. How do they do it? First, lets take a look at a what a diet is.
Merriam-Websters defines diet as a noun as: a: food and drink regularly provided or consumed b: habitual nourishment.
That is what a diet is and you already have a diet. The first, and biggest mistake people make is to not realize they already have a diet. What you are eating right now is your diet.
But, most people do not realize they already have a diet. They assume a diet is something else.
Here is the other definition of diet, this time as a verb, an action, something you do: a: to cause to eat and drink sparingly or according to prescribed rules.
Most people go on a diet without ever contemplating that they already have a diet and that is the first reason why diets fail.
You are already eating. You are already consuming carbs, sugars, protein and fat. You are already eating within a range of calories. Your body is used to eating your current diet—whatever it is. To lose fat, you need to eat less calories than you are already eating.
For example, if you eat a big bowl of ice cream every night while watching TV, that is equal to about two full measuring cups of ice cream. That is about 580 calories and a whopping 61 grams of sugar.
If you cut that in half, to just one full measuring cup, you have cut out 290 calories. A pound of body fat has about 3,500 calories. So, over the course of 12-13 days, you will lose one pound of fat.
Even a minor adjustment, like going from a big bowl of ice cream to just half a bowl can result in fat loss. Pretty cool.
But most people don’t think like that. They don’t realize the ice cream is part of their current diet, in fact, they never even contemplate their current diet.
To avoid the biggest dieting mistake you must know what your current diet is. Most people eat a variety of foods throughout the week, but there are still some basic patterns. We humans are creatures of habit. We tend to eat a lot of the same things at the same time of day.
To determine our current diet, all we need is a pencil and some paper.
Before you even begin to think about going on a diet, you need to know what your current diet is. That means you need to write down what you eat and drink. The more precise you are, the better the results will be once you start your anti-diet.
You will want to write down everything you eat and drink for a week. And you must be honest with your pencil and paper. Really. The worse you are eating now, the easier it is to lose weight. Just like in the ice cream example, going from a big bowl to half a bowl every day will result in fat loss. So, if you eat a bowl of ice cream every day, write it down.
Once you have gone through a week of writing down what you eat on your current diet, you are ready to take the next step, which nearly ever dieter fails to do—be consistent on your current diet.
Take a look at what you wrote down for the week. There will be some things you eat every day. There will be some things you only ate once.
If you were to take the time to calculate all the grams of carbs, sugars, fat and protein you ate on each of the days, odds are each day would be different. Some days you ate more, some days you ate less. Some days had more calories, some days had less.
What you want to do now is avoid the second most common reason diets fail—inconsistency.
Remember in the example where if a person cuts back on their ice cream they could lose one pound of fat in 12 to 13 days? It only works if they cut back the ice cream for 12 to 13 days.
At this stage, to avoid the inconsistency trap, don’t start your diet or cut anything out. Still eat all the foods you normally eat, but try to eat the same things every day. Try to eat the same portion sizes of the same things every day.
If you have fast food for lunch, pick one thing you normally eat and eat that every day.
For example, if you have a burger, fries and a soda, eat the same burger, fries and soda every day.
This consistency of your current diet provides a baseline and the baseline is very, very important.
The human body is a durable, precision machine that will also adapt. The body’s metabolism will adapt to the amount of calories, carbs, sugars, fat and protein you eat. By being consistent as you can be with your current diet, your body will adapt, it will treat that as the baseline. Any reductions from the baseline, over the course of 10 to 12 days can result in fat loss.
If your body is used to eating 3,000 calories a day, even a reduction of 300 calories a day, or just a 1% reduction over the course of 12 days will result in the loss of one pound of fat. And as we saw in the ice cream example, you can start to lose fat, by just cutting back a little.
So, once you have spent a week or two on your consistent, current diet it is time to start the anti-diet eating plan and it starts very gradually. By starting gradually, you will avoid the third reason diets don’t work—metabolic adjustment.
As we explained above, the body will adapt to the amount of calories, carbs, sugars, fat and protein it is eating. Most diets and dieters do not take the body’s natural adaptation into account. The biggest mistake a person can make on a diet is going ‘all in’ from the start.
Most people do not know what their current diet is. Their current diet is not consistent. They will cut out all the ‘bad’ foods all at once. They will lose weight for a week or two or even four. But then, the body adapts. The metabolism adjusts to the amount of calories, carbs, sugar and fat a person eats. When it adapts, the fat loss stops. Even worse, the person may begin to gain back fat even when still on the diet!
Yep, this is why diets don’t work.
But how do we keep the metabolism from adjusting to what we eat? By making gradual changes.
In the ice cream example, a person could lose one pound of fat by cutting back from two full measuring cups of ice cream to just one full measuring cup in 12 to 13 days. Does this mean that you could lose 30 pounds a year by just cutting back on the ice cream? No. The body will adapt to the reduction of even just 290 calories a day. It will adapt in 10 to 14 days. Which means the fat loss from eating less ice cream will stop. Even worse, after the metabolism adjusts, you could start gaining weight again!
So, what do you do? How do you stay one step ahead of your body’s metabolic adjustments? By making gradual adjustments every week.
When a person goes ‘all in’ on a diet, cuts out all the so-called ‘bad’ food and eats nothing but tuna and lettuce, the body will adapt within a few weeks. The bigger the change, the harder it is for the body to adjust, but once the adjustment is made, the fat loss slows down or stops.
But the person who goes ‘all in’ cannot make any more changes. There is nothing left to cut out to keep losing fat. This is why so many people find it difficult or impossible to lose those last five, ten or twenty pounds and keep them off.
To stay one step ahead of your metabolism, you need to consistently eat the same things every day, and gradually eliminate carbs and sugars. In the first week, our evening ice cream eater would cut back from two full measuring cups to just one full cup. In the second week, they would cut it down to just half a cup and in the third week, they would cut out the ice cream altogether.
Notice the gradual reduction over the course of three weeks. More importantly, what time of day did our new anti-dieter reduce calories, carbs and sugars? In the evening.
Carbs and sugars eaten close to bed time are not used for energy. If they body does not use them for energy they are turned into fat.
The easiest way to lose fat is to gradually reduce carbs and sugars eaten at the end of the day. Start with any carby or sugary snacks or foods you eat before bed, gradually eliminate them, then gradually eliminate the carbs and sugars you eat with your last meal of the day.
Some of you are scratching your heads. Sugars in the evening meal? Yes. If you have pasta or white rice with your evening meal, you are having a lot of sugars. There are more sugars hiding in food than you would imagine and if you eat them at the end of the day, odds are you will not use them and they will be converted to fat.
Targeting carbs and sugars eaten at the end of the day works for a couple reasons. It eliminates the excess carbs from being converted to fat while you sleep, and at the end of the day most people are less active and less likely to need the sugars to power their brain.
If you cut out carbs and sugars eaten in the morning or during the day you feel grouchy and sluggish. It is difficult to think. A lot of people who cut out carbs or sugars in the morning quit their diet because they feel terrible or have a carb/sugar deprivation headache. If you cut out the carbs/sugars at the end of the day and get a headache, it will not affect your productivity during the day and because sleep is only a few hours away, the headache will be over soon.
The gradual elimination of carbs and sugars will prevent the headaches and crash. The brain loves sugar. Sugar is the brain’s preferred fuel and it adapts to the amount of sugar eaten. It doesn’t really need that much to keep functioning, but will get very angry if it is used to a lot of sugar and suddenly doesn’t have very much. So, gradually eliminate the carbs and sugars starting at the end of the day.
The gradual elimination of sugars from the last meal of the day is done just like the ice cream.
Lets say a person eats a chicken breast, lettuce and macaroni and cheese for dinner. They have already eliminated their ice cream dessert, but to keep ahead of the body’s metabolism and to keep losing weight, they need to keep reducing calories, carbs and sugars.
The average mac & cheese has 259 calories, 48 grams of carbohydrates and 7 grams of sugars in a one cup serving. If the mac & cheese is reduced by half the first week, our anti-dieter will be able to stay ahead of the body’s adjustment. Then, if the macaroni is cut down again to just ¼ cup, the anti-dieter is still staying ahead of the metabolic adjustment. The final elimination of the macaroni will be rather easy after that and the fat loss is still staying ahead of the body’s metabolic adaptation.
This process is repeated slowly throughout the day. The next target will be any carbs and sugars eaten in the afternoon, then lunch, then mid morning and finally breakfast. At breakfast the carbs will not be eliminated, just the sugars. A bowl of corn based cereal would be replaced with oatmeal or something else that has carbs, but very few sugars.
The substitution of foods with a lot of carbs and a lot of sugars with lower carb and low or no sugars foods is something a lot of dieters don’t think about. And failing to use substitutes is another reason diets don’t work.
When people don’t eat they get hungry. Being hungry sucks. It makes people cranky. It makes them quit their diet. Dieters often just cut back on food when they should be substituting foods.
A person crashes and gets cranky when the available calories and blood sugar drops. To maintain a steady level of calories a person should eat five to six times a day.
A lot of people have a snack in the afternoon. But, often it is loaded with sugar and carbs. If they are cut out, and you are at work, the last few hours of your work day will be worse than usual. So, instead of cutting out the muffin, start with just eating half the muffin. Then, instead of totally eliminating the afternoon snack, have some protein like some whey protein with water, a small can of tuna, some lunch meat, anything with protein, but not sugars or carbs.
The same idea can be applied to our evening ice cream eater. For a lot of people it is difficult for them to fall asleep on an empty stomach. But the ice cream can be substituted with some whey protein with cinnamon and a no-calorie sweetener or any type of protein.
Notice the substitute examples are always protein. A lot of people make the mistake of swapping a muffin for fruit or a soda with a fruit juice or sports drink. The problem is fruit, fruit juice and sports drinks have a lot of sugar in them.
For example, a typical pre-packaged blueberry muffin has 38 grams of sugar in it. An apple has 13 grams of the sugar in it. The swap of an apple for a muffin is good for a week or two, but then those sugars will have to be eliminated to keep the fat loss going and stay ahead of the metabolic adjustment.
The average soda pop has 33 grams of sugar. A glass of orange juice has 21 grams of sugar. A sports drink will have 32 grams of sugar. Even some vegetables have a lot of sugar. A couple baby carrots will get you up to 15 grams of sugar pretty fast.
The best substitute is almost always going to be protein. Whey protein or meat.
Substituting protein for carbs and sugars creates a smaller calorie reduction than outright elimination, but most dieters don’t understand that not all calories are created equal and that when reducing calories, protein is vital to losing fat.
The body will adapt to a reduction in calories by adjusting the metabolism. But before the metabolism adjusts, it makes up for the reduction in calories by using something else for fuel. When you diet, you hope it is fat. But, the body will gladly use muscle for fuel. Some of the weight you lose while dieting may not be fat, it may be muscle. Which means you could lose five, ten or twenty pounds but not much flab.
Whether you know it or not, your body is constantly rebuilding muscle tissue. It takes protein to rebuild the muscle. When you reduce calories, the body will convert fat and muscle for energy. If you are not eating enough protein, the muscle repair slows and the conversion of muscle for energy can accelerate. So, instead of losing fat, you are losing muscle.
This is a double whammy of another reason why diets don’t work. Losing muscle instead of fat does not improve your appearance and, the loss of muscle slows down your metabolism even more. So, not only is the metabolism adjusting to the reduction in calories, is burns fewer calories because there is less muscle. Remember, muscle burns fat.
To keep the muscle and lose the fat you must eat protein. The protein you eat is also less likely to be converted to sugars and then body fat. Which is why not all calories are created equal.
Substituting protein for carbs and sugars also prevents another thing that plagues the ‘all in’ dieter—starvation signal.
When there are too few calories, or after a sharp reduction in calories, the body can go into starvation mode. In starvation mode, the metabolism slows way down and prefers to use muscle as energy saving the fat for later. Fat loss and weight loss will slow down or stop and a further reduction in calories only drives the body deeper into starvation mode.
Of course, once a person gives up on the ‘all in’ near starvation diet and goes back to their old diet, guess what happens? Because the metabolism is slowed down, and the calories are increased they gain fat but not any of the muscle that was used by the body.
Substituting protein for sugars and carbs prevents the starvation mode, provides a steady energy supply, helps preserve muscle which keeps the metabolism going and allows you to lose fat.
But, there comes a point when nearly all sugars are gone and replaced with protein and the only carbs eaten are clean carbs like oatmeal for breakfast. Any further reduction in carbs is impractical. A reduction in calories could be counter productive.
How do you stay ahead of the metabolism and keep it from adjusting in this situation?
By doing a metabolic reset.
Because the body adjusts to what is eaten it can be tricked and the trick can be rather enjoyable. The metabolism only knows what is happening now, and what has happened recently, therefore, it can be tricked into resetting itself by increasing the calories, sugars and carbs for a short period of time. A person trying to lose fat can reset the metabolism to a higher level by pigging out for a few hours once a week.
On Saturday night feel free to go crazy. Have the ice cream, have some pizza or whatever strikes your fancy. This is not a license to go crazy the whole day, but have something you really like for a meal and something sweet for dessert.
This does two things, it keeps the body’s metabolism off balance and gives you a psychological break from the monotony of the diet.
Your body will read the signal that this increase in calories, carbs and sugars is the new normal and will try to adapt. As it tries to adapt it will work overtime. When you resume your normal lower calorie/carb/sugar eating plan, it will still be in overtime mode and then have to adapt.
The metabolism is slightly reset which is why it is called a metabolic reset. The weekly metabolic reset also gives you another way to gradually reduce calories, carbs and sugars. Over time, the metabolic reset can be reduced from a crazy four-course pig out to just an extra bowl of oatmeal.
Keeping the metabolism from adjusting to a set point can also be applied daily by varying the gradual reduction in carbs.
For example, lets say a person is consistently eating 100 grams of carbs per day. Instead of reducing it to eating 80 grams the next week, they could fluctuate the carbs they eat, gradually bringing to total down. Here’s an example:
Sunday: 90 grams
Monday: 85 grams
Tuesday: 80 grams
Wednesday: 70 grams
Thursday: 75 grams
Friday: 70 grams
Saturday: 200 grams (metabolic reset)
Sunday: 90 grams
Monday: 80 grams
Tuesday: 70 grams
Wednesday: 75 grams
Thursday: 70 grams
Friday: 70 grams
Saturday: 180 grams (metabolic reset)
Sunday: 85 grams
Monday: 75 grams
Tuesday: 70 grams
Wednesday: 70 grams
Thursday: 65 grams
Friday: 65 grams
Saturday: 160 grams (metabolic reset)
In this example you see why knowing what you eat is very important, because minor gradual adjustments yield results over time. Every week the total amount of carbs goes down, but it is done slowly, daily, to stay ahead of the metabolism.
Eventually though, even the ‘anti-diet’ reaches a point where a person just cannot practically go any lower on carbs and sugars. This is usually around 30 grams of carbs a day. When people eat less than 30 grams of carbs a day, they tend to get flaky and cranky and are unproductive in their work and family life.
If a person hits that point, and keeps eating that same diet, the body will adapt and they could start gaining fat again. Yes, the metabolism destroys every diet. But, it can be manipulated again with a longer metabolic reset.
The longer metabolic reset is pretty straight forward. Have big Saturday pig out and start over again, with 50 to 100% more carbs than where you bottomed out. Gradually reduce the carbs again over the course of weeks and repeat the cycle again and again and again.
So far we have discussed the physiological reasons why diets don’t work. But the leading cause of why diets fail is the person.
People always bemoan how hard it is to eat right. But the trick is not in the dieting, it is in the purchasing. With the exception of self-sustaining farmer, gardeners, we tend to buy our food. If you don’t buy sugary, carby foods, you can’t eat sugary carby foods. Don’t buy sugary, carb laden foods at the grocery store and you can’t eat them at home. Don’t order sugary, carb laden foods at a restaurant and you can’t eat them.
The only place left to overcome the temptation is the office, where people are always bringing sugary foods and social events. Overcoming the temptation takes will power to make a decision.
Losing fat is a series of daily decisions, a dozen or more decisions each day. There are lots of sugar pushers out there, but the decision is yours. You are the one who decides whether or not to put the food in your mouth.
For a person trying to lose fat, the one meal at a time, one day at a time, one decision at a time works the same way. You have to own the decisions. You can eat the ice cream anytime you want, but you choose not to. You could have a doughnut at work, but you choose not to.
“I think the one thing that people have realize is that small changes can lead to big results,” says Dr. Helen Smith, a Knoxville, TN psychologist and exercise enthusiast. “A person should set goals having to do with action.”
Smith says it is better to break it down into individual actions. Small steps, small daily decisions like eating a grilled chicken breast instead of a breaded, fried chicken breast, as noted above, can make a significant difference.
“It is better to break it down and then check off that you did it,” Smith says.
And if you slip once, do not let it snowball. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t throw it all away. A few hours later you will have another decision and try to get it right that time.
Diets don’t work because people make one mistake and decide to quit. Diets don’t work because some people keep making the wrong decisions.
At this point some of you are thinking “it can’t be this straight forward.” Yes, it is. And that is another reason why diets don’t work.
For some reason people have become convinced that there is some secret, some trick, to losing fat. There isn’t.
Nita has been helping people lose fat and get in shape for a decade. She has helped working moms get washboard abs, single career girls get the body they have always wanted and middle aged men to get in better shape than they were in high school.
Many of them say the same thing, “I can’t believe it is so straight forward.” They expected Nita, as a professional fitness athlete, to give them all kinds of secret tricks like a pill or potion. But there is no secret. They all do the ‘anti-diet’.
I encountered this not long ago. A friend of mine wanted to do a bikini fitness contest and needed to lose body fat. I put her on the anti-diet. She didn’t believe it would work, so she went to a retired professional fitness competitor and asked what kind of diet she should do.
The retired competitor explained to her what to do. It was the same as the ‘anti-diet’.
The ‘anti-diet’ is the secret trick used by bodybuilders and bikini fitness competitors to lose fat.
Now you too know the secret tricks and why diets don’t work.
The ‘anti-diet’ works for the working mom, the busy dad, the single career girl, college students, former jocks and even people who have always been heavy. It works because it is adaptable to each individual, does not require drastic changes in lifestyle and prevents the body’s metabolism from adjusting.
Compared to most other diets and gimmicks, it really is a secret hiding in plain sight.
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