Dieting Failure And Calories In Vs Calories Out
I post a lot about diet culture, that dieting doesn’t work and that it is extremely difficult to lose weight and keep it off long term. Many commenters accuse me of being deluded. They quote calories in calories out and the laws of thermodynamics. They say if you eat little enough, you will lose weight, full stop.
I accept what they say at the basic level about calories in/calories out and weight in general. However, there are many, many variables when it comes to calories. When I first moved in with my boyfriend (now husband), I cooked the same food and ate as I had at home with my parents.
I grew up in a social housing area. My stepfather worked full time and my mother part-time as a nurse. They also had my brother, who was ten years my junior. My parents were poor, tired, and had mental health issues, so heavily processed foods like chips (fries), chicken burgers, fish fingers etc., were both cheap and easy. The home-cooked meals my mother made when my sister and I were younger became extremely rare.
Once I educated myself about nutrition and started cooking healthier meals, our grocery spend more than doubled. Although we were fortunate that we could afford to do that, many others aren’t so lucky. I know there are ways and means to make healthy eating more affordable. Things like batch cooking, shopping at the end of the day to look for items with a shorter shelf life etc., but these are things you have to learn.
I believe it’s a significant failing in schools that so many essential life skills are ignored. I believe students should be taught how to make a budget, shop around for the cheapest utilities, what an APR is, and, most importantly, learn how to make a few staple family meals. We should also teach how to bulk buy cheaper ingredients you can use to make multiple meals.
There’s also trauma. Many sexual abuse survivors describe overeating first for comfort and also to feel bigger and therefore safer. Medication can cause weight gain, so can PCOS, menopause and so on. Yes, many people gain weight because they eat too much, but it’s still a complex and multi-faceted issue.
Once the weight is on then, there are a whole host of physical and psychological challenges that prevent many people from successfully losing weight long term.
The Minnesota Starvation Experiment
It’s often quoted, but The Minnesota Starvation Experiment offers a great deal of insight. The men selected for the experiment were very carefully chosen. They had to be:
Single
Male
In good health, physically and mentally
Able to get along with others even in difficult circumstances
The experiment called for them to lose 25% of their starting body weight. However, weight loss was not the purpose of the study. Instead, the aim was to find the best ways to rehabilitate people who had suffered from starvation. This was just after World War 2, and men who had been in concentration camps were at the forefront of their minds.
The men started eating 3200 calories a day and then spent six months eating at a “semi-starvation” level, or in other words, they were on a diet. I put those words in speech marks because they were eating 1570 calories a day. That is far more than is allowed on any number of diets on the market today. The effect this reduction had on the men was dramatic.
Researchers removed three members of the study because they broke their diet and a fourth who did not meet the expected weight loss. Of those who remained, the following results were observed:
Physical Effects Of Dieting
- Gaunt appearance
- Reduced strength
- Reduced stamina
- Low body temperature
- Lack of sex drive
- Fatigue
Psychological Effects of Dieting
- Subjects became obsessed with food
- They would read and talk about constantly
- Some subjects made each meal last over an hour to fool their body into believing they were eating more
- Irritability and depression
- Lack of interest in anything but food
- Hoarding and food theft
- Two subjects experienced psychosis and were admitted to the hospital
You might think that these symptoms would recede once they began eating normally again. The physical symptoms did improve markedly, but the psychological scars lasted much longer. Many participants developed binge eating disorders, and one had to have his stomach pumped. They struggled to interpret their body’s hunger signals for months, and it was two years before the majority of them felt back to normal.
Remember, this was a closely monitored scientific study. The men were physically and emotionally fit and healthy before and were monitored by doctors throughout. They still experienced extreme symptoms even though their calorie intake isn’t even considered low by today’s standards. What chance do people on 1200 calorie diets have?
Studies Into The Effects of Dieting
An analysis of diets found out that diets don’t work a lot of the time. A study by Field et al. in 2003 of almost 17,000 children aged 9-14 found that dieting was a significant predictor of future weight gain. Both boys and girls who dieted regularly were 5 and 12 times more likely to binge eat than those who never dieted.
In Finland, 2000 sets of twins aged 16 to 25 took part in a 2011 study by Pietilaine et al. If one of the twins who attempted international weight loss just once were two to three times more likely to gain weight than their twin who did not diet. This risk increased further each time they dieted.
If you want to chime in and say that exercise may help, the data doesn’t support this either. Saarni et al 2006 studied athletes who completed in elite-level weight-based sports where weight is a factor, such as boxing and weight lifting. These types of competitors tend to weight cycle, losing and gaining weight, depending on if they are competing or not. The study found this weight cycling also predicted future weight gain. Even in world-class athletes.
We Aren’t Kidding Ourselves
It saddens me how invested our society is in thinness. How much pressure women feel to achieve the “perfect” body. How much of our time and money we waste while dieting on gym memberships, shakes, teas, diet plan memberships and so on.
I hope that my article helps illustrate that there is so much more at work than people just being fat, lazy and having no self-control. Our bodies are designed to hoard fat in case of famine; they don’t know that’s not likely to happen anymore.
So before you preach that weight loss is easy, please, please read this article carefully and understand it isn’t.
