Why Diets Fail - Essay Example

 Why Diets Fail Today, the world knows the great variability of diets and they still continue appearing. All of them promise a kind of a new and unique way of losing weight that is said to show its efficiency already after a weak of its application. However, it appears in practice that the process of weight loss and retention is not as easy as it is said to be. Great numbers of people are dieting, but having no success as far as their weight is either remains the same or turns back in even bigger amounts. Thereof, the aim of the following paper is to discuss some of the widespread reasons of why diets become a failure and what lies behind their ineffectiveness. To start with, the weakness of a diet starts with the way it is being perceived by the prevailing majority of people who decide to resort to it. What is being usually understood under the word “diet” bears such connotations as something temporary, starveling, but fast. As a result, it is common for people to jump into extremes and go on a diet that cuts tremendously the amount of the calories intake and enjoy a fast loss of kilos during a week or several weeks. However, the truth is that the faster the weight is lost, the faster it is gained again. Numerous comprehensive studies report that from one-third to two-thirds of people that were on a diet regain more weight than they lost. (Wolpert, 2007) The abrupt change of eating habits that brings extreme cut of calories is viewed as a stress for the organism to which it answers with the fat loss. (Blomain, Dirhan, Valentino, Kim & Waldman, 2013) By this, the body would try to store even more fat to compensate for the past stress, and so to say, be more prepared the next time in case a deficit of calories would happen again. The following touches upon impatient people who are willing to see the results as fast as possible as well as those who are not capable of finding the happy medium in their eating habits. There is a category of people that either lacks the needed knowledge or strength to take a well-thought and substantial approach to weight loss. When decided to go on a diet, they would expect from the extra kilos to disappear without a delay, but the usual speed which a healthy dieting presuppose is likely to discourage such individuals and they would depart from the initial eating plan. (Halvorson, 2012) Others will continue running to the extremes of eating extensively, as a usual habit, and eating almost nothing when overly restricting self for years, which facilitate fat storage. Therefore, impatience and extremes remain widespread reasons of dieting failures. Furthermore, diets can put too much pressure on one by being overly and unreasonably restrictive and creating too many rules to follow. Changing food choices presupposes an amount of pressure as far as a person has to give up old eating habits and reject food that brings him/her a pleasure. This pressure would aggravate with every additional restriction, such as cutting salt, fat, sugar, bakery and other immediately and significantly. ("Promoting successful eating," 2006) As a result, it is likely that food would stop brining pleasure and enjoyment at all and contribute to breaks of a diet. Furthermore, as it is explained by Yoni Freedhoff (2014), in his recently published book The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail, overly restrictive diets lead to binge eating and psychological devastation that encouraged people to seek professional help later. A person cannot stick to a diet when it is a complete torture. There is also sad news for those who are, actually apply lots of efforts and remain rigid about fulfilling all the demands of a diet without cheating, but have a genetic predisposition to storing extra amounts of fat. Blaming bad genes as a main reason of being overweight has been a common excuse for ages and today it would not sound like a novelty. In fact, it became too popular for the majority of people to believe into its plausibility. However, a study by a group of Swedish researchers found that person’s genes indeed may play a role in his/her ability to get rid of fat. According to Spalding et al. (2008), the number of adipocytes (or fat cells) is formed during the childhood and adolescence and that this number is a “subject to little variation during adulthood.” In addition, the number of fat cells also depends on genetic factors. The same study explains that overweight or obese people often have their fat cells formed at an earlier age, faster their expansion, or more late end of cells expansion. (Spalding et al., 2008) All of these stand for the greater amount of fat cells and inability to significantly reduce their number. Subsequently, while many people may name genes as a simple excuse for their failure, for some, this is actually a reason why diets do not work. In addition, it should be mentioned that the ability to remain on a diet and avoid unhealthy eating habits to some extent depends on the surrounding people. Firstly, a study that investigated social influences on eating found that people “unconsciously mimic behavior of each other” when they eat together. (Borreli, 2015) Due to it, a dieting person can often appear under the negative influence of close people whose eating patterns will serve as an encouragement to break a diet. Secondly, viewing how other individuals eat products that are forbidden poses a great temptation for a dieting person that not always can be withstood. (Freedhoff 2014)Therefore, it is suggested to keep tempting products out of sight. As a whole, specialists remind that social influences on food intake are multifaceted and include not only family influences, but a broader social context as well. ("The determinants of," 2005) Being not conscious of this fact, one can become affected more easily. Although, in general, going on a diet can appear like not a promising and rewarding endeavor, it would be wrong to think that a person is not capable of controlling personal weight in a long-term perspective by means of restricting food habits. What should be understood, in this regard, is that the current body composition depends on person’s current mode of life. ("Weight-loss and nutrition," 2014) It means that it is not possible to lose weight today by cutting unhealthy foods and controlling amounts of the food eaten and think that the body weight will remain such tomorrow when the diet is over and one turns to the previous eating habits. Therefore, a diet can work in case it would gradually change into person’s custom when he/she would no longer want to return to the old lifestyle. In this case, a diet can encourage one to make changes and teach how to eat in moderate and, importantly, consider the quality of products, which is a strong predictor of not only weight loss, but the overall improvement of health. ("The best diet:," ) Yet, the perception of a diet as a temporary measure should be altered. It is common for people to decide to go on a diet in search for a fitter look and a healthier body. Yet, it often appears that diets fail to correspond to expectations and, eventually, lead to the even greater weight gain. The given problem remains among the actively discussed ones with people revealing weak sides of diets, standing behind their ineffectiveness. Among such should be named the habit of jumping into extremes, inadequate expectations about diet and lack of patience as well as too much restriction and other. At the same time, it would be wrong to think that diets are useless since they can be successful with the right approach that includes changing eating patterns for good and consumption of healthy and high quality products. References Avena, N. (2014, Feb 3). Why diets fail. Psychology Today , Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/food-junkie/201402/why-diets-fail Blomain, E., Dirhan, D., Valentino, M., Kim, G., & Waldman, S. (2013). Mechanisms of weight regain following weight loss. International Scholarly Research Notices , Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3901982/ Borreli , L. (2015, Mar 19). You are what you eat: How personality traits can influence weight. Medical Daily , Retrieved from http://www.medicaldaily.com/you-are-what-you-eat-how-personality-traits-can-influence-weight-326342 Freedhoff , Y. (2014). The diet fix: Why diets fail and how to make yours work. (1 ed.). Harmony. 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