Diets Don't Work

Hello everyone and thank you very much for joining me!

So the heading of this post is a rather bold statement to make, but I'm sure after reading this, you will understand why I came to this conclusion. Before I begin, I'd like to share with you some info about myself and the reasons why I found myself absorbed in the diet and exercise industry.

When I was young, I would eat very little because I was concerned about becoming overweight. My fitness fanatic father would tell me that I shouldn't eat certain things, or else - and I quote "would get fat like my mother". She was obese from the day that I was brought into the world, however, she did show me photographs of herself in her teens looking athletic and brimming with vitality. I was led to believe that she had put this weight on because of me and my sister, making me feel a slight burden of guilt on my shoulders. I was young and vulnerable, taking my dad's advice to stay away from certain foods, 'certain foods' meaning starving myself all day and only eating when in a public view. This made me feel better as I knew I wouldn't ever get fat with this kind of attitude which I continued until I was a teen myself.
I left the family home at 17 and started making my life purpose plan. I didn't know much about healthy living and I didn't know how to cook. I would buy anything that you could throw into an oven. A year on, I was sickened to discover that I had gained over two stone. My friend sitting next to me, photograph in hand as tears ran down my face. How could this be me in the picture? This was taken during a recent holiday and I never felt as overweight as I looked. With the disgust that I had for myself and the determination to not end up like my mother, I did what any sensible person would do - I went on a diet.
Each failed diet led me to another. With advice coming from every 'expert', each one saying that this one will be the right one. For over 8 years I dieted with no real results. Not only did I feel the physical pain but the emotional pain left me exhausted, so I decided that I had to take things into my own hands and this is where my research began.

I've been researching the diet and exercise industry for over a year whilst practicing my own theory to losing weight which I named The Mind Switch (which I will share with you if you are interested :-D). I soon discovered that diets don't work, yet we spend billions of pounds a year on weight loss products! So this is why I am writing to you all today to talk about some of the key reasons as to why I feel that diets don't work. (Please bare in mind that there are many, many reasons as to why diets don't work but I'd be here all day writing this so I opted for my three favorite reasons.)

1# EATING LESS AND EXERCISING MORE DOESN'T WORK

A dietitian, fitness coach or nutritionist may well tell you that it's simple maths, calories in Vs calories out, that eating less and exercising more is the perfect method for losing weight. The problem is that the moment you stop eating less and you stop exercising more, you will also stop losing weight. So did it really work?

Here are some reasons as to why eating less and exercising more simply doesn't work.

-OVERESTIMATING AND UNDERESTIMATING.
We often overestimate how much we have burned during our gym workouts. The is because the gym machines give us an inaccurate reading. The machine will ask you to input your height, weight, and age for it to give you an estimated amount of calories that you will burn. The machine doesn't take into account is your fitness level. If you are fitter or leaner you will burn less than the reading or a first timer at the gym may well burn more.
We then underestimate how many calories we consume when we refuel after the gym. We know that after a workout, our muscles need to repair and our energy levels need to be restored, so our brain will send us a signal to find food. What we decide to eat can be the difference between that work out being worthwhile or being a complete waste of time. To give you some examples:

Starbucks Grande latte (no sugar) - 30 mins on a stair machine to burn this 190 calorie drink.
Gatorade sports drink 500ml - 30 mins intensive yoga to burn 125 calorie drink.
Blueberry Nutragrain bar- 10-mile bike ride to burn off 120 calorie snack.
Grilled chicken 6" inch sub (no mayo) 1 hour & 10 mins brisk walk.

A reminder that these are estimates so you may need to spend even longer at the gym to burn off these products.

-EXERCISE MAKES US HUNGRIER.
When the body is overworked, your body will send a message to the brain to refuel. The dilemma is that your brain doesn't send you a message saying 'load me up with leafy greens', it's message will be along the lines of ‘find me some food that contains a thousand calories because I’m super hungry today’. We have to remember that our brains do not understand if we are overweight or not. They are there for one job which is to keep us functioning properly, so when we work extra hard at the gym, our body registers that we have used more energy than normal so we should replace all of that lost energy with food, therefore, the more we exercise, the more we eat which doesn't lead to weight loss. Sure, you can use willpower to stop yourself from eating the extra food but you will cause yourself more problems in the future. (I.e Set weight which I will talk about later).

-TREATING OURSELVES
After a long hard week of work, extra workouts and being sensible with our calories, we seem to feel the need to treat ourselves. My question is why do we treat ourselves with the one thing that can undo all of our hard work? Food!!
It's equivalent to saying that you've been so good this week with saving your cash, so Friday night you're treating yourself to the Ritz Carlton. Kinda doesn't make sense right??

-INTERNAL BODY ENGINE
Our internal body engine is the number of calories our bodies burn per day just by living (eating, thinking, breathing etc). When we diet and exercise more, this can change the number of calories that we naturally burn. If you find that you put more weight on after a diet, this will be because you have slowed down your internal body engine. When you went on the diet, your body burned fat but also muscle, so when you go back to your regular diet, your body needs to burn fewer calories per day because it weighs less. Think of it this way. If I gave you a backpack with 5kg of weight in it and I asked you to carry it every day for a week, do you think you will need to use more energy during that week with the backpack? Then a week later, if I removed the backpack, would you still use the same amount of energy as you used when you was carrying the backpack?
This is exactly how our body works when we diet, so losing weight will slow down our internal body engine because we now weigh less. The only solution would be to continue eating less and less as your weight loss continues which still will be a problem due to your set weight. (Explain more soon!)

This summarises that my first key point has many reasons as to why eating less and exercising more simply doesn't work. Moving on to my next key point...

#2 BRAINWASHED INTO EATING ‘LOW FAT’ PRODUCTS.

We opted for low-fat products after some new scientific evidence in the 1950s was discovered. It showed us that fat was bad for us and of course we believed this because who are we to question a scientist, however, there were people at the time that were trying to revoke his findings. It came to light that the scientist was incorrect and that he had actually purposely missed out some of the vital information that he had found, just so he could be published on the front cover of a magazine!
This video is from YouTube. It will give you some more information about Ancel Keys.

Once Ancel Keys released his findings, the food production companies started changing their food products to keep up with the consumers. They rebranded their products giving them names such as low-fat, reduced fat, healthier choice, wholesome and many many more.
As a consumer, we wanted to eat the same amount of a product, for example, a yogurt, but with less fat yet we wanted it to taste exactly the same and this is exactly what they gave us....but at a price…

Taking the Muller Light Fat-Free Strawberry Yogurt as an example. Now we all know that dairy products contain fat, so this tells us that the producers must have removed all of the natural fat and replaced this fat with something else. If we look at the ingredient list.
Yogurt(Milk), strawberries (10%), Water, Fructose, Modified Maize Starch, Gelatine, Flavourings, Beetroot Juice Concentrate, Acidity Regulations: Sodium Citrates, Citric Acid, Sweeteners: Aspartame.

We can see that they have used artificial sweeteners and sugars. Not only will you notice that it contains three different kinds of sugar which are Fructose, Modified Maize Starch, and Beetroot Juice concentrate but one of the products is an artificial sweetener named Aspartame, which also goes by the name of NutraSweet, Vitasweet, and Candarel. Aspartame has been known to damage the brain function and is thought to be carcinogenic.

To conclude, low-fat products have a misconception of being better for you when in fact they are more likely to leave you hungrier. They will add to your weight problem because they have a ridiculous amount of chemicals that our body cannot recognize and the natural fats and fiber which your body can recognize have been removed.

I hope that you are soon in agreement with me that diets don't work , but if you're still unsure, here's another key point for you to consider.

#3 SET WEIGHT AND STARVATION MODE.

Your hunger and energy use are controlled by your brain. The body has its own sense of weight which is your set weight (BMR: Basal Metabolic Rate). Your set weight can range between 10-12 pounds, provided that you stay within this range, your body will remain happy. If you try to eat less, your body will strive to increase your weight back to its original set weight, and if you eat too much your body will try to burn it faster to get back to its happy weight, working like a thermostat - keeping itself regulated.
The bad news is that the set weight can go up but it is extremely difficult to go down. The issue is that the brain doesn’t know if you need to lose weight or not. It creates a set weight for one reason only, which is to stop ourselves from starving to death. This is why diets don’t work. Because a typical diet means eating less, which means the body reacts to the diet like it is starving. It is a sensible response from the brain to treat the diet like famine. Once you have lost the weight and you start to eat your normal diet, it will force itself to jump back to its original weight and even more because it doesn’t want this to happen again. Research has shown that it can take over 7 years for the body to lower its set weight and sometimes it never will.

For now, I feel that I have provided you with enough information as to why I feel that diets don't work. However, if you have any questions for me, I'd certainly be happy enough to answer them.

What's next for me?
I will continue to uncover the truth about the diet and exercise industry whilst pursuing the scientific evidence that I need to prove my own theory (The Mind Switch) works.

I hope you have enjoyed reading my post today and again, thank for you taking the time to read this.
Leanne

Quote of the week*
“Take care of your body, it’s the only place you have to live” Jim Rohn.