Transform your body in 21 days! Don’t miss out! Sign up now! Yup, it’s diet season again.
Hi Musers, Now we’re into the new year the diet ads that were starting to appear in December will be everywhere. You cannot escape them. TV, radio, social media, buses, billboards, your email, magazines, and podcasts. They are everywhere you look. Not to mention that 80% of the population is likely talking about the diet they just started. It is so easy to be dragged in. To forget all the times diets failed you. How bad you felt, how much of a failure. Surely this one will be different we say, this one will work!
No. It Won’t
Diets do not work. Period. The studies that show diets at the most effective can only show 5% of participants keeping the weight off for five years. That means that for every 100 people who start a diet 95 will either not lose weight or else lose it and regain it. Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? If doctors or drug companies were trying to get a drug approved that only worked in 5% of cases do you think they could? Hell no! Many surgeons wouldn’t operate on a patient that only had a 5% chance of success. So why are diets different? £$£$£$£$
Weight loss companies get rich: we get fat!
There are two business models that tend to work long term. The first is you buy something relatively expensive. My example here is a freestanding mixer. I’m not saying it’ll last forever but you’d expect at least 10-15 years. Only selling to people once will make money but not a huge amount per customer over that time. So to boost their income they rely on accessories for your mixer, maybe buying another product and even spare parts.
The second model looks for regular income. It’s for less than a large purchase but month on month it adds up. This is the one the diet industry and the fitness industry both rely on. You pay every month to access the service they’re offering. In the past it was common to tie you into a contract for 12 months but they’ve realised they don’t have to do that. They key is though that the diet industry in particular benefits from the fact diets do not work. If you signed up, lost weight, and kept it off they would be screwed.
Here’s how they get you
The big boom time in both these industries is New Year. You’re feeling fat, you’ve eaten a lot over Christmas and you feel bad about yourself. I personally believe this is mostly because these industries have trained you to. Better business for them! New Year is a time of resolutions so you decide, full of determination, that you’re going to lose x pounds and join a gym.
If you’re like most people that determination will last 2-3 weeks at most. You might stick with the diet a bit longer. A lot of diets have dedicated forums online so the support of your peers keeps you at it. After this though it’ll taper off. You’ve had a long day at work and decide to miss your gym session and go tomorrow. The next day you forgot your gym things. Day 3 and you really want to go but you have no food in and have to go shopping…and so on.
In the case of the diet you “slip up” and eat too much. Everyone supports you so you get back on track. A week or two later you don’t follow the plan for a couple of days. Over time this gets more frequent til you’re not following it at all. This is because, and I’m going to keep saying it, diets do not work!
You still pay though!!
You tell yourself that you will get back to the gym in a few weeks when work is less crazy. You have lots of “bad” foods in the house and once they’re all gone you’re back to that diet. Of course, it never happens. I spent months and sometimes up to a year paying for gyms and/or diet programs I wasn’t using. It sounds stupid but it’s easy to lie to yourself. It seems like such a small amount and you’re not really missing it. You feel better because you’re a member and so one magical day you’ll succeed. Except you never do. Remember the 5% success rate?
How they make their money
Both these industries rely you on you signing up multiple times, failing multiple times, blaming yourself and continuing to pay because of guilt. Because of brainwashing that your body isn’t good enough the way it is. I am calling this out as BULLSHIT!!! The fact is you are beautiful just as you are. You don’t need to lose a single pound. Who cares if your arms aren’t toned? That you don’t have abs 🙄 You are not the devil incarnate because you wear a size 20 rather than a freakin’ size 2!
Oh, the waste!
It has taken me DECADES to embrace this truth. Decades of feeling bad about myself. Feeling like a failure. Wasting hours of my life at one miserable gym session after another. Wasting hundreds, maybe even thousands, of pounds on gym memberships, diet programs and diet products. I actually have an Incredible Hulk moment whenever I think about what I could have done with that time and money. I wanna smash something! That why I have sworn off diets and you should too.
No, I’m not promoting an unhealthy lifestyle
That’s usually the fallback position when someone dares to say these things. I exercise, possibly not as much as I should, but fairly regularly. I love veggies. They take up at least half my plate at lunch and dinner. I do not live on pizza, chips and coke. I eat balanced meals. I tend to eat too much at times but my main weight gain was caused by mental health issues and comfort eating. My health isn’t perfect but neither is a lot of people’s.
I am not saying don’t exercise, don’t eat nutritious meals, and I’m certainly not saying you should go out of your way to maintain your weight. All I am saying is that if you want to be healthy, that’s healthy not necessarily thin, then diets are not the way to do it. Your body does not understand what’s happening when you’re trying to lose weight. It freaks out. Thinks you’re in a period of starvation. It then does everything in its power to store fat and it pushes your hunger cues into overdrive. Most people cannot resist this response which is why they end up bingeing after a period of dieting. Don’t believe me? You can do more reading here with the wonderful Dr Lindo Bacon.
Would you put up with a faulty toaster?
If you bought a new toaster and when you tried to use it found it didn’t work 95% of the time what would you do? Would you blame yourself? Say maybe you’re not turning it on correctly. Or possibly you’re putting the toast in the wrong way. Maybe your electrical system is to blame. Of course you wouldn’t! You’d take it back to the shop, say it’s broken and get one that works. You wouldn’t believe the salesperson if they told you that’s how it’s supposed to work. You’d laugh in their face and demand your money back.
So WHY do we accept this with diets? Again the answer is brainwashing. To protect their business model diet companies have to blame you. You’re weak, you don’t have enough willpower, you didn’t follow the plan properly, and so on. If it’s your fault then they can sell you a new product that’s even easier to follow! Kerching! (Spoiler alert! The new one won’t work either because diets do not work). Please, please stop putting your money into the coffers of these evil corporations.
What should you do?
I am not a doctor or nutritionist so I’m not qualified to advise you but I can give you a few tips.
1) Start small. Make tiny changes that you can sustain. Once it’s part of your life add in something else. If you worry you don’t exercise enough start with a 5-minute walk per day. Just 5 minutes. How easy is that? Once you’ve done it consistently for 4-6 weeks maybe make it 2 5-minute walks per day. Or having one vegetable with your dinner every night. Whatever works for you.
2) There’s no such thing as failing. This is your life, not a 12-week plan. If you eat too much or lie around the house for a couple of weeks it’s ok. Just start trying to build in healthier habits as I explained in point 1. If you stop for a while then it’s ok, just start it up again. Diets do not work, building small changes into your lifestyle will.
3) If you want to exercise try to find something you enjoy. Hiking, dancing, a martial art, swimming, or even trampolining! If it’s something you enjoy then it’s a treat, not a chore. It does make all the difference. Please note if you can’t exercise or don’t want to this does not make you a bad person! There is nothing holy or morally superior about exercise. Do what is right for you. You will still be an amazing person.
Whew!
Bit of a long one today my Musers but I hope it helps you to believe diets do not work, turn your back on diet culture and live a happier life. If you have anything to add to my piece please pop it in the comments 👇 If you’d like to check out some of my fave healthy recipes you can see them here.
Love CMoo xx
