Diets don't work!

feamainn

Why do people continue to go on diets when it's quite obvious they are all massive scams?! The failure rates for diets are so high that if they were surgeries nobody would get them. Weight Watchers has a 97% failure rate! 97%!

The whole point of the diet industry is to make money off of people's insecurity. They give self conscious people advice on how to under nourish themselves which leads to them losing weight and then leads to their bodies screaming out for real nutrition which results in them binging which results in them feeling like a failure which results in them "giving up" which results in further binging and weight gain which results in more insecurity which results in them crawling back to these businesses and giving them more money.

We know all of this so why do people continue to turn to this disgusting industry? There was no obesity epidemic before dieting became a thing. We look back on 90's diets like slimfast and laugh about what bull**** it was. OF COURSE IT WAS BULL**** THEY ARE ALL BULL****.

I seriously don't understand how the diet industry is even legal. I thought scamming people was illegal?
It's just annoying me so much because the lads in the EU are going on about the epidemic so much lately with their new little plan due for March (the plan is to put calories in menus) but if they're so concerned why don't they go after one of the main perpetrators?

By going on these diets people are just keeping themselves unhealthy and obese. Why can't people just have the cop on to realise the way to a healthy body is to give your body exactly what it needs. Your body does not want low-fat yoghurts and it does not want you to stuff your face with Big Macs either.

Why and how are people so stupid that they don't realise
eating the right amount of healthy food=being f**king healthy????

Alf Veedersane

I've found that ranting at people usually makes them see the error of their ways.

Gummy Panda

Diets work. People fail

Obesity is due to easy and inexpensive access to caloric dense food.

Alf Veedersane

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Diets work. People fail

Well, I think it was more in the context of Clean 9 etc that 'diets' is being used

feamainn

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Diets work. People fail

Obesity is due to easy and inexpensive access to caloric dense food.

Diets do not work, cop on. Erm no. A lot of the most healthy foods have a lot of calories. Porridge? Apparently you didn't know this but you kind of need calories to function. It's sugary and saturated fat filled foods that will hurt you but if you feed yourself with nutritionally dense food you don't crave that crap in the first place. People on diets are ALWAYS craving. Craving is a sign you're not feeding yourself enough of the right food. Weight watchers chocolate bars don't fall under the category of proper food by the way.

Blacktie.

feamainn wrote: »

Diets do not work, cop on. Erm no. A lot of the most healthy foods have a lot of calories. Porridge? Apparently you didn't know this but you kind of need calories to function. It's sugary and saturated fat filled foods that will hurt you but if you feed yourself with nutritionally dense food you don't crave that crap in the first place. People on diets are ALWAYS craving. Craving is a sign you're not feeding yourself enough of the right food. Weight watchers chocolate bars don't fall under the category of proper food by the way.

Low carb day?

Gummy Panda

feamainn wrote: »

Diets do not work, cop on. Erm no. A lot of the most healthy foods have a lot of calories. Porridge? Apparently you didn't know this but you kind of need calories to function. It's sugary and saturated fat filled foods that will hurt you but if you feed yourself with nutritionally dense food you don't crave that crap in the first place. People on diets are ALWAYS craving. Craving is a sign you're not feeding yourself enough of the right food. Weight watchers chocolate bars don't fall under the category of proper food by the way.

Have a snickers

theboy1

Gluten free diets work.

RonanP77

By diet I'm assuming you mean specific popular diets? I went on a diet last year and lost 2 stone, this year I've decided to lose a few extra lbs so I'm dieting again, it'll work.

For me a diet is cutting out the crap, no more alcohol, crisps, chocolate, take aways etc. I reduce my calorie intake initially to about 1,500 a day but if I exercise I eat more. Diets work if you do them right and are committed to making a lifestyle change. I went from not working out to doing it 5 days a week. When I get to my desired weight I need to take on about 2,200 - 2,500 calories a day to maintain that weight.

Mellor

feamainn wrote: »

Why and how are people so stupid that they don't realise
eating the right amount of healthy food=being f**king healthy????

What should people eat to be healthy?

DoYouEvenLift

Once you realise the average person is a complete ignorant idiot about food and exercise you just get over it and concentrate on yourself. Seriously, avoid conversations about nutrition and exercise as much as possible. If someone asks me if I workout in real life I actually say no and deny it now and change subjects.

Macy0161

I'm not sure how you can lose weight without some kind of diet/ calorie control? tbh this "diets are bad" gets trotted out here quite often, and quite flippantly imo. Even if the long term goal is to change habits, I believe you need to be weighing and calorie counting to give you the base for that in terms of portion control going forward.

I have found that the likes of weight watchers, slimming world etc haven't worked for me (I've always questioned some of their points system, which then makes me lose faith somewhat), but all they really are are methods of calorie control using a points system rather than actually counting calories.

ch750536

I agree with the sentiment OP but the message is garbled by anger.
We all have a diet, diet is simply what we eat. Your anger is with mass produced 'diet remedies to weight issues'. I agree, they are all largely nonsense.

Take weight watchers for example.
Plus side of things

• Group incentive - others will spur you on
• You're not alone

Bad side of things

• They tell you to eat all the wrong foods
• Food consumes your life - the opposite should happen
• Weight is the measure - not well being
• Hard & costly work to follow

Weight watchers has a huge failure rate, the facts are out there. 5 years later most people have the same issues.

Education is the key. Finding the reasons why you eat and changing it is the key. 'Diet remedies to weight issues' are not solving these issues.

Penn

feamainn wrote: »

Why do people continue to go on diets when it's quite obvious they are all massive scams?! The failure rates for diets are so high that if they were surgeries nobody would get them. Weight Watchers has a 97% failure rate! 97%!

The whole point of the diet industry is to make money off of people's insecurity. They give self conscious people advice on how to under nourish themselves which leads to them losing weight and then leads to their bodies screaming out for real nutrition which results in them binging which results in them feeling like a failure which results in them "giving up" which results in further binging and weight gain which results in more insecurity which results in them crawling back to these businesses and giving them more money.

We know all of this so why do people continue to turn to this disgusting industry? There was no obesity epidemic before dieting became a thing. We look back on 90's diets like slimfast and laugh about what bull**** it was. OF COURSE IT WAS BULL**** THEY ARE ALL BULL****.

I seriously don't understand how the diet industry is even legal. I thought scamming people was illegal?
It's just annoying me so much because the lads in the EU are going on about the epidemic so much lately with their new little plan due for March (the plan is to put calories in menus) but if they're so concerned why don't they go after one of the main perpetrators?

By going on these diets people are just keeping themselves unhealthy and obese. Why can't people just have the cop on to realise the way to a healthy body is to give your body exactly what it needs. Your body does not want low-fat yoghurts and it does not want you to stuff your face with Big Macs either.

Why and how are people so stupid that they don't realise
eating the right amount of healthy food=being f**king healthy????

The issue is sustainability and misinformation.

The general statistic thrown about stating that 95% of diets fail don't take into account that sometimes people diet for specific reasons, but never plan to keep up with it, eg losing a few pounds before a holiday, or a wedding etc. Then they put some of the weight back on after.

In addition, dieting itself often doesn't tackle the underlying issue of why a person needed to lose weight in the first place. Some people have bad eating habits related to psychological reasons. Dieting doesn't work if you do it for a while then give up when you reach your target. It's important that dieting be just part of a full lifestyle change. That a person changes their eating habits permanently, rather than just for a few months.

Then, you have to take into account the numerous different ways and advice that's out there about how to lose weight. How they conflict and contradict each other. How food labels do everything they can to make it harder for you to calculate what is in the food you're eating. It takes a good bit of effort to actually properly research the truth, which is effort a lot of people don't put in or they're swayed by incorrect information.

In a way, diet's don't work. Lifestyle changes and proper research does, however. And it only works, if you put in the work.

Blacktie.

Brutalitops wrote: »

How food labels do everything they can to make it harder for you to calculate what is in the food you're eating

What? They give you /100g in everything.

UCDVet

You need to differentiate between ridiculous fad diets, and actual diets.

The truth is, diets work *exceedingly* well. I've yet to see a single controlled study where anyone gained weight by reducing their caloric intake, or even failed to lose weight.

The only difficulty is people's inability to stick with them. You can see this in animals (NOTE - I'm not a vet, so take this with a grain of salt). Overweight animals lose weight, like clockwork, if you reduce their calories. It works. It always works. It never doesn't work.

(And yet - *pet* obesity is a huge problem these days)

Penn

Blacktie. wrote: »

What? They give you /100g in everything.

Yes but they also often split things into irregular serving/portion sizes, throw LOW FAT on it everywhere while bumping up the sugars and salts to ridiculous levels etc.

I'm just saying that unless you put in the effort to properly work out how much of something you'll be eating rather than a quick glance, you can be eating some really poor foods and wondering why your diet isn't working

Mellor

Brutalitops wrote: »

throw LOW FAT on it everywhere while bumping up the sugars and salts to ridiculous levels etc.

But the nutrition states that quite clearly.

The portion size can be silly on some products, not all or close to all. But it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to figure out how much you eat.
If there's 8 serves on the label, and you eat 1/4 of the packet. It doesn't take much effort to work out you ate 2 portions.

Blacktie.

Brutalitops wrote: »

Yes but they also often split things into irregular serving/portion sizes, throw LOW FAT on it everywhere while bumping up the sugars and salts to ridiculous levels etc.

I'm just saying that unless you put in the effort to properly work out how much of something you'll be eating rather than a quick glance, you can be eating some really poor foods and wondering why your diet isn't working

Well yeah if you're going to be lazy about something you're not going to see results. This can be said about anything.

Penn

Mellor wrote: »

But the nutrition states that quite clearly.

The portion size can be silly on some products, not all or close to all. But it shouldn't take more than a few seconds to figure out how much you eat.
If there's 8 serves on the label, and you eat 1/4 of the packet. It doesn't take much effort to work out you ate 2 portions.

Blacktie. wrote: »

Well yeah if you're going to be lazy about something you're not going to see results. This can be said about anything.

I completely agree with both of you. I'm just saying that these are little tricks that companies use to make people think their food isn't as bad as it is, and I have no doubt it works on a lot of people who are rushing through their shopping or not taking into consideration all the different elements of meals etc. I'm pretty sure I've seen some 500ml drink being classed as 2 servings, but if someone picks it up and sees that each serving contains X number of calories, they might not check to see how much a serving actually is.

And that's what I mean about doing proper research and educating yourself, you have to put the effort in and properly account for everything you're eating, instead of just eating something because it says Low Fat on the packet.

crestglan

I agree diets don't work eating healthy does work if you burn off the calories you eat every day by moving you will not gain weight

smileyj1987

Diet and exercise do work you just need to have the motivation to do it , I'm down three stone now and have another one to go. That's in the space of 6 months so it does work you just need to stick at it .

RonanP77

smileyj1987 wrote:

Diet and exercise do work you just need to have the motivation to do it , I'm down three stone now and have another one to go. That's in the space of 6 months so it does work you just need to stick at it .

That's fantastic, best of luck shifting the last one. Motivation really is the key, you only get out of a diet what you put into it. See it as a lifestyle change and mix it with exercise and it'll work.

Sam Kade

smileyj1987 wrote: »

Diet and exercise do work you just need to have the motivation to do it , I'm down three stone now and have another one to go. That's in the space of 6 months so it does work you just need to stick at it .

I lost 3 stone by eating less moving more no special diet or any of that nonsense .

greasepalm

thats good going,i myself found out could be a diabetic so on 3 glucophage a day and need to shift some weight [ loads hopefully ] went into see dietician who said make small adjustments in what you eat ok will try,second visit i got told i lost 1 stone in the middle of winter also lol.
not drinking orange juice which i loved marmalade and other things cut out or reduced sugar intake do seem to work.
hopefully things will get better.

eviltwin

Depends on the diet and the person. I lost 5st on Weight Watchers and kept it off until I stopped going to meetings and I gained 3 stone back. I need the accountability of a public weigh in, I can't really manage at home. But I don't see WW as a diet as I can still eat what I like, I just have to be sensible about it. I've met people who have lost vast amounts of weight so fair play to them. Not everyone can do it alone.

_Tombstone_

Only 3% who lose a good bit of weight keep it off over 3 years.

RonanP77

_Tombstone_ wrote:

Only 3% who lose a good bit of weight keep it off over 3 years.

Another two years for me to go then until I become one of the 3% (that's assuming losing 20 % of your body weight counts as a good bit)

the world wonders

"Diets" in the commonly used sense of the word don't work, i.e. the crap you see in lifestyle sections and magazines about drinking three pints of broccoli juice a day for 30 days, as endorsed by some D-list celebrity, buy the bestselling book now for just €14.99. What does work is sustainable, permanent changes to your lifestyle.

Mellor

the world wonders wrote: »

"Diets" in the commonly used sense of the word don't work, i.e. the crap you see in lifestyle sections and magazines about drinking three pints of broccoli juice a day for 30 days, as endorsed by some D-list celebrity, buy the bestselling book now for just €14.99. What does work is sustainable, permanent changes to your lifestyle.

Fad diets don't work a lot of the time.
But sustainable, long term, positive changes to your eating habits does work, and by definition that is also a diet.

I think thus entire thread is if the same opinion but semantics over the word "diet" has it going in circles.

RonanP77

Novak659 wrote:

I changed my diet about 5 years ago, I went from 21% body fat to 12% body fat and have sustained it over the last 5 years. I've done that by eating mostly "primal' food and by lifting weights and working on mobility exercises.

How do I get an idea of my body fat %? I think mine is still fairly high and I need to lower it.