Why Dieting Doesn't Work

Quick fix diets usually never give long lasting results. The reason is most of the weight loss is due to loss of water. When you restrict calories, your body interprets it as impending starvation. The way the human body works, when it is under stress of starvation, it hoards the fat and burns the muscles first. The weight lost comes from water and the break down of muscles - the places we don't want to lose it from.

So, the last thing you want to do is drastically cut calories. When you do, the body will start breaking down muscle protein to produce energy for vital body functions. The body will use muscle protein as fuel, before it starts burning fat, so you end up losing more muscle mass than fat during dieting.

Breakdown of muscle protein results in large amounts of waste products, ketone-bodies, to appear in the blood. The body has to get rid off these. The ketone-bodies are filtered from blood in the kidneys to the urine. To do this, the body pulls large amounts of water with it, to flush the body out. Thus you lose weight fast. No matter how much you drink, you can't prevent this loss of water. The only way to get control of your water balance is to stop starving yourself.

When dieting, the body starts saving energy by turning some functions off and running others at a slower pace. Fat is designed to provide the body with energy and protect it from starvation. If you go below 1000 calories a day, your body will slow your metabolism down to compensate. That is why weight loss slows down dramatically after a few days on a crash diet. And a slow metabolism is exactly the opposite of what you want to lose weight.

Another reason that diets don't work is bingeing. Bingeing doesn't happen because of a lack of willpower. It is a direct result of dieting. As your body senses a restriction in calories, it goes on the alert for an impending threat to survival. As a result, it tells you to eat, which results in your bingeing on calorie and fat filled foods. The more successful you are at starving yourself, the more the body will increase it's efforts to eat more foods. Eventually the body wins because survival is our strongest instinct. Bingeing is also a result of depriving yourself of something, which psychologically makes you obsessed with what you can't have.

After the quick weight loss diet you go back to your normal eating pattern, and what happens? The body that has shut off functions in order to conserve energy is now, suddenly, fed. The cells in your body have an immediate response to the sudden abundance of food, and that is to keep on saving energy, storing up for the next famine. As your body saves energy, it also begins storing all the extra energy - as fat. So, you end up having lost fat burning lean muscle tissue and added more fat! That wasn't really what you had in mind when you started your diet.

In addition to building fat again, the body has no ketone-bodies to get rid of. Consequently, less water is secreted and your water balance is restored. As you replenish your emptied water stores you rapidly gain back the weight you lost. So, by building fat, and replenishing water, you will gain weight quickly the first few days after a diet.

And each time you diet, you are teaching your body how to deal with starvation by hoarding fat, so each round of dieting increases your overall body fat!


From “Why Diets Don’t Work” By Dianne Ronnow © 2005. All rights reserved.


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This publication contains the opinions and ideas of the author. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subject matter covered. For specific medical advice or diagnosis, consult a healthcare provider.