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Why diets don't work.--Rather, why MOST diets don't work.
13 years ago
Now, I know most folks don't even bother looking at this stuff I bitch about, much less consider it in their everyday lives. But this is something important to me, to some degree. So I'm gonna bitch about it.
Now, the title of this journal will no doubt send some folks into a ragefit. "But Ivellios! I've got a friend/family member/coworker who's subscribed to Atkins/East beach/West Beach/North Beach/ South Beach/ Dr. Phil--FUCK I HATE Dr. Phil, et cetera, et cetera..."
So hold your horses there, sweet cheeks. Lemme ask you one thing about those friends of yours on those diets. Well, several things, but singular in sequence.
Are they all still on those diets? Chances are, if they're still skinny sexy McSkinnybones, answer is yes.
And what happened when they stopped those diets? They gained the weight back, maybe even some more.
Now, to be fair, this is the crux of the diet dilemma--yes, these dieticians are out for your money. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. But some of these diets DO work. I've met quite a few folks who went on Atkins, lost all the weight they sought to lose, and never looked back. I'm not disputing the effectiveness of some diets out there.
The KEY here, is--and not ONE of them will openly admit this in passing, but only under sheer constant, face-to-face scrutiny--is that these diets will ONLY keep working so long as you keep yourself stuck to them.
First, let me say that there is NOTHING wrong with this. Despite common modern misconceptions of what a "diet" is, the facts remain. A diet is a strict eating regimen that may or may not include physical activity. Nothing more, nothing less. And all of you out there who have tried diets before, and those diets failed, and you were blamed for "not sticking with it"....I hate to be the asshole to say this, but that statement is true--at least, with SOME of those diets. Only some, not all.
So, you ask, where's the bullshit? The bullshit is in how these diets tend to commercialize themselves--not actually saying, but presenting themselves in a way that effectively states "Just do this diet for a bit, you'll lose weight, then can go back to your old eating habits." Now yes--none of them actually SAY that...because legally, they can't. Because, legally, such statements are flat out FALSE. And they know it.
But they don't expect you to know it. And the legal wording over such claims are at best very narrowly defined, and at worse, very vague and ambiguous. This is their strength, their hook. Their means of getting you to buy their food program, and/or their books, and/or every other supplement they offer. Your sheer lack of knowledge and understanding of how the human body treats food, calories, intake, and lack thereof.
LEt me speak candidly, here. The human body is literally millions of years old. A ballpark figure, without extensive searching for information, will give you something around, oh, 3 to 2.5 million years old. Now, yes, we weren't always Homo Sapien during that massive space of time, but that's honestly splitting hairs and almost getting into semantics, as far as science and evolution is concerned. Suffice to say that our bodies have been dealing with both surpluses of, and dramatic lack of food for a very, very, very, very, very, VERY long time. It has it's own methods with which to deal with either scenario. Now consider this fact: while we've had the ability to cook our own food for around 500,000 years at least, to almost one million at most (these are guesses based only on prehistoric archaeology, mind you; there is no absolute PROOF that this is the case, but it is the most likely case), we've only, very recently within our history, had the ability to make the high-calorie foods we all love, starting with the staff of life, bread.
Note to consider: IF Bread is the staff of life, surely water is the blood? Think on that after the journal, by all means.
Anywho, the point here is the simple fact that our bodies, through no fault of our own, are genetically wired to respond to periods of fasting--a.k.a. periods where no food is part of daily intake, or is very rarely part of daily intake. This isn't based in some supernatural or religious comuppance, no punishment for denying the bounty of the world; it's simple survival. To explain it in short, precise terms:
When our bodies start to suffer a sudden decrease of caloric and/or nutrient intake, our metabolism, at first, goes into a brief overdrive, to use up what's available to keep the body functioning at the rate it has been up to this point. But--and this is another, VERY key truth about the human body NO dietician wants to admit--the metabolism isn't a set factor. Ever. It exists with one, and only one purpose: to process calories into energy to maintain vital bodily processes. There's nothing new, nothing transcendant, no MYSTERY to this fact of human biology. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an outright LIAR.
But once that deprivation of calories and/or nutrients continues, the body makes an admittedly smart assumption: that the food source has run out, and may not come back for a while. So it changes it's pace. It actually slows itself down.
Yes, that's right--your metabolism can, and WILL, speed or slow itself in accordance with your current intake of calories and nutrients, and your current level of physical activity requiring those calories/nutrients.
I've heard so many tales of how your metabolism goes to hell when you reach 40 or 50 from my parents, I could just barf. They were only telling me what they thought were the facts. And they're not entirely wrong; the longer your body doesn't take part in physical activity, the more your metabolism lowers. Not because you're some lazy, lackluster sunovabitch who deserves that double chin for being so lazy...but because, over time, increased sedentary lifestyle leads, by nature, to a lower metabolism. Less physical exertion means less calories to be burned, fewer nutrients to be consumed, and thus a lower metabolism, so you don't burn through what you have unnecessarily.
That's right. I've just told you the dirty secret of the dietary industry: the human metabolism isn't entirely set in stone. At least half of it is set in your physical lifestyle and eating habits.
Now, some folks will cite genetics here, but that's honestly a cop out. The three basic genetic body types: edomorph (fat), ectomorph (skinny), and mesomoprh (muscular) are just templates. Nothing more, nothing less--they only have a partial say in how your body ends up appearing and operating. To what degree they have such a say depends on the individual, and in this I'm afraid to say there is no blanket answer--no matter what Dr. Phil OR Penn & Teller tell you.
Long story short, the long and short of it, no one cares just say what you need to say, TL;DR...the dietary world has been, at best, obfuscating the true facts behind how weight, the human body, and so on and so forth work, intentionally. At worse, they've been peddling their own ideas and theories and plans and diets and so on and so forth blindly, out of faith bourne from imperfect, almost psuedo-scientific reasoning.
If you find a diet that works for you? That is GREAT. That is AWESOME. I applaud you, and stand behind you every step of the way--just with the understanding that said diet needs you to keep doing it. Forever and ever. And that stopping it will end up losing a good deal of your results unless you keep physical activity and a healthy eating regimen up. And even then, you're STILL going to get SOME of that weight back unless you start doing some serious physical activity in the diet's place.
Don't take your body and it's processes for granted, or as some inconvenience, no matter WHAT dieticians want you to think. Those processes--and their results--are there because they've kept your forbears ALIVE in the very HARDEST of times: the times when even FOOD wasn't a guaranteed luxury.
Now, the title of this journal will no doubt send some folks into a ragefit. "But Ivellios! I've got a friend/family member/coworker who's subscribed to Atkins/East beach/West Beach/North Beach/ South Beach/ Dr. Phil--FUCK I HATE Dr. Phil, et cetera, et cetera..."
So hold your horses there, sweet cheeks. Lemme ask you one thing about those friends of yours on those diets. Well, several things, but singular in sequence.
Are they all still on those diets? Chances are, if they're still skinny sexy McSkinnybones, answer is yes.
And what happened when they stopped those diets? They gained the weight back, maybe even some more.
Now, to be fair, this is the crux of the diet dilemma--yes, these dieticians are out for your money. Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. But some of these diets DO work. I've met quite a few folks who went on Atkins, lost all the weight they sought to lose, and never looked back. I'm not disputing the effectiveness of some diets out there.
The KEY here, is--and not ONE of them will openly admit this in passing, but only under sheer constant, face-to-face scrutiny--is that these diets will ONLY keep working so long as you keep yourself stuck to them.
First, let me say that there is NOTHING wrong with this. Despite common modern misconceptions of what a "diet" is, the facts remain. A diet is a strict eating regimen that may or may not include physical activity. Nothing more, nothing less. And all of you out there who have tried diets before, and those diets failed, and you were blamed for "not sticking with it"....I hate to be the asshole to say this, but that statement is true--at least, with SOME of those diets. Only some, not all.
So, you ask, where's the bullshit? The bullshit is in how these diets tend to commercialize themselves--not actually saying, but presenting themselves in a way that effectively states "Just do this diet for a bit, you'll lose weight, then can go back to your old eating habits." Now yes--none of them actually SAY that...because legally, they can't. Because, legally, such statements are flat out FALSE. And they know it.
But they don't expect you to know it. And the legal wording over such claims are at best very narrowly defined, and at worse, very vague and ambiguous. This is their strength, their hook. Their means of getting you to buy their food program, and/or their books, and/or every other supplement they offer. Your sheer lack of knowledge and understanding of how the human body treats food, calories, intake, and lack thereof.
LEt me speak candidly, here. The human body is literally millions of years old. A ballpark figure, without extensive searching for information, will give you something around, oh, 3 to 2.5 million years old. Now, yes, we weren't always Homo Sapien during that massive space of time, but that's honestly splitting hairs and almost getting into semantics, as far as science and evolution is concerned. Suffice to say that our bodies have been dealing with both surpluses of, and dramatic lack of food for a very, very, very, very, very, VERY long time. It has it's own methods with which to deal with either scenario. Now consider this fact: while we've had the ability to cook our own food for around 500,000 years at least, to almost one million at most (these are guesses based only on prehistoric archaeology, mind you; there is no absolute PROOF that this is the case, but it is the most likely case), we've only, very recently within our history, had the ability to make the high-calorie foods we all love, starting with the staff of life, bread.
Note to consider: IF Bread is the staff of life, surely water is the blood? Think on that after the journal, by all means.
Anywho, the point here is the simple fact that our bodies, through no fault of our own, are genetically wired to respond to periods of fasting--a.k.a. periods where no food is part of daily intake, or is very rarely part of daily intake. This isn't based in some supernatural or religious comuppance, no punishment for denying the bounty of the world; it's simple survival. To explain it in short, precise terms:
When our bodies start to suffer a sudden decrease of caloric and/or nutrient intake, our metabolism, at first, goes into a brief overdrive, to use up what's available to keep the body functioning at the rate it has been up to this point. But--and this is another, VERY key truth about the human body NO dietician wants to admit--the metabolism isn't a set factor. Ever. It exists with one, and only one purpose: to process calories into energy to maintain vital bodily processes. There's nothing new, nothing transcendant, no MYSTERY to this fact of human biology. Anyone who tells you otherwise is an outright LIAR.
But once that deprivation of calories and/or nutrients continues, the body makes an admittedly smart assumption: that the food source has run out, and may not come back for a while. So it changes it's pace. It actually slows itself down.
Yes, that's right--your metabolism can, and WILL, speed or slow itself in accordance with your current intake of calories and nutrients, and your current level of physical activity requiring those calories/nutrients.
I've heard so many tales of how your metabolism goes to hell when you reach 40 or 50 from my parents, I could just barf. They were only telling me what they thought were the facts. And they're not entirely wrong; the longer your body doesn't take part in physical activity, the more your metabolism lowers. Not because you're some lazy, lackluster sunovabitch who deserves that double chin for being so lazy...but because, over time, increased sedentary lifestyle leads, by nature, to a lower metabolism. Less physical exertion means less calories to be burned, fewer nutrients to be consumed, and thus a lower metabolism, so you don't burn through what you have unnecessarily.
That's right. I've just told you the dirty secret of the dietary industry: the human metabolism isn't entirely set in stone. At least half of it is set in your physical lifestyle and eating habits.
Now, some folks will cite genetics here, but that's honestly a cop out. The three basic genetic body types: edomorph (fat), ectomorph (skinny), and mesomoprh (muscular) are just templates. Nothing more, nothing less--they only have a partial say in how your body ends up appearing and operating. To what degree they have such a say depends on the individual, and in this I'm afraid to say there is no blanket answer--no matter what Dr. Phil OR Penn & Teller tell you.
Long story short, the long and short of it, no one cares just say what you need to say, TL;DR...the dietary world has been, at best, obfuscating the true facts behind how weight, the human body, and so on and so forth work, intentionally. At worse, they've been peddling their own ideas and theories and plans and diets and so on and so forth blindly, out of faith bourne from imperfect, almost psuedo-scientific reasoning.
If you find a diet that works for you? That is GREAT. That is AWESOME. I applaud you, and stand behind you every step of the way--just with the understanding that said diet needs you to keep doing it. Forever and ever. And that stopping it will end up losing a good deal of your results unless you keep physical activity and a healthy eating regimen up. And even then, you're STILL going to get SOME of that weight back unless you start doing some serious physical activity in the diet's place.
Don't take your body and it's processes for granted, or as some inconvenience, no matter WHAT dieticians want you to think. Those processes--and their results--are there because they've kept your forbears ALIVE in the very HARDEST of times: the times when even FOOD wasn't a guaranteed luxury.
The OTHER kind of diets aren't the ones advertised. Instead, they aren't one size fits all either. They're the ones which often compliment physical activity with the intention of working with whatever training you're following. Incidentally, it's not called a diet either. No no, diet is only part of it. What it is it then? A lifestyle change. That is, it is something you practice throughout your entire life. There is no brand or cheap chemical tactic of shocking your body into losing weight. Why? Because weight loss isn't the goal! Making oneself fit and keeping it that way is the goal. And that's a HUGE difference in simply losing weight.
Granted, on the flip side, there are "supplements" that supposedly help with that too. Fun fact: those supplements that have all the derpy labels and have over 9000 different supposed chemicals? Yeah...those don't go through the FDA because it is neither a food nor a drug. What are they exactly? Only the manufacturer knows that, and they're certainly not going to tell you that; they're not legally obligated to!
The only supplements that are actually useful are the ones that typically focus on one thing that can't typically be found in most diets (speaking in terms of eating habits, NOT weightloss diets). Fish oil is probably the most common, but that's mostly due to any lack of focus on Omega-3 fatty acids, which go hand-in-hand with the Omega-6 which ARE found in most Western diets. Granted, even then, if there's an excess of O6s, then they're goingto be "competing" for the same thing any additional O3s that are added. Translated: it means supplements are just that and are not some miracle pill.
I won't get too much into lifestyles focused on building muscle or for competitive athletics, because the public secret behind either is that, in their most competitive form, they will more than likely involve using artificial means to obtain an advantage or unnatural results. The word "freak" is hardly a misnomer in this regard. But that is on the extreme spectrum.
For those of us normal people, I pause and remember one simple fact: what we put into our bodies doesn't necessarily come back out. And that is an important thing to remember regarding ANYTHING about the human bidy.