Why Weight Loss Diets Don’t Work In The Long Run
Article contributed by Jessica Wolff, Wellness Expert
Motivation is like gasoline. The more you have the faster and further you can go. When you run out of gas you have to find a gas station very quickly or the journey will end. Behind our motivation is our emotions, the steering wheel that leads us to different places. Without the emotions we wouldn’t start driving in the first place, the motivation is just the force that gets us there.
There’s a sea of diets out there on a spectrum from straight out dangerous to super healthy, but the thing most of them have in common is that they don't work in the long run for the majority of people.
The reason why is not necessarily because of the diet itself, but because it’s not specifically made for you.
Diets don’t take into consideration your emotional wellbeing, your sleeping rhythm, your job, your hobbies, your workout routines or social events.
Instead you have to change your lifestyle and routines according to the diet, when it should be the other way around.
It takes a huge amount of motivation and energy to follow a diet. You need to plan ahead, go to the store, prepare meals, follow different recipes and cut out a lot of foods you like.
With diets often comes forbidden food lists and regulations. You may have to bring your own meal to work when your co-workers go out for lunch, make a separate meal for your family, watch when others enjoy a delicious desert while you’re sipping on your tea.
Because you have to make so many changes at the same time and quickly, it requires to keep that motivation on a very high level, in order to maintain the diet. Our energy levels, hormones and emotions change all the time which has a direct impact on the motivation. Sometimes all it takes is a bad day to throw you off the diet, which in turn leads to feelings of guilt, failure and in the end makes you want to give up.
Imagine having a bad nights sleep, a horrible day at work, and a fight with a family member. It’s Friday and you’re invited to a birthday party.
The motivation to keep going is low that day. Everyone else is having drinks and cake, and you think “oh well, I’ve been so good the last few days, had a horrible day, it can’t hurt to have some cake”.
The stress and “hunger” hormone is high and your body is craving that sugar. Before you know it you had way more cake then you planned and slowly the guilt starts kicking in. Guilt is like the little monster that ruins everything. It often leads to jumping between all or nothing. Many get stuck in a cycle of emotional eating because of guilt. After a “all the wat slip” you need even more motivation to pick yourself up again and continue the diet. The more you slip the harder it gets.
The other problem with many weight loss diets is that if you don’t eat enough, your metabolism will slow down and your body “thinks you’re starving”. Sure, you will lose weight (a combination of fluids, muscles and fat) but your body is also trying to hold on to that fat and gain fat when possible.
So once you get off the diet and start to eat normally you will put on weight more easily and sometimes you end up weighing more than before the diet.
So, why can some people stay on diets for months or even as a life style? In order for a diet to work for a longer period of time you’re motivation level has to be very high and stay high. What gives fuel to the motivation is something that you feel extremely emotional about.
For example someone getting married, an actor getting ready for a role, a bikini fitness or body builder going to compete, a boxer who needs to make the weight before a match or someone who needs to lose weight before a surgery.
The question is, what happens once this event is over? I´ve seen women going on extreme diets a few months before their wedding. Going on that honeymoon, gaining the weight back when they stop dieting, then trying to go back to the diet but failing. The reason why is because there no high motivation goal there anymore. Why jump in that car and drive thousands of miles without having a destination.
The good news is, you don’t need a diet to lose weight. You don’t need forbidden food lists. It’s absolutely possible to heal the relationship with food, find freedom and still reach your goals.
Of course it doesn’t mean you can eat whatever you want when you want, just sitting on the couch. It’s about finding the right balance.
The plan needs to be made for you, according to your routines, your work, social events, hobbies etc. and there has to be flexibility.
Write the goals in stone but the plans in sand. You can mark out the destination on the map but there are many different roads that will take you there.
For a long lasting change, we need to build in routines. Routines are something that don’t require much motivation or energy.
It’s like brushing your teeth. When we were kids it took some time and maybe some tantrums to learn, but now, even if we had a bad day, we still brush our teeth.
My Client Mia
My client Mia, couldn’t believe her ears when I told her there are no forbidden foods and she won’t have to walk around hungry.
Based on her food diary she handed in, I could see what the obvious problem for the weight gain was. The amount of carbs in the evening after work.
However, when someone has a weakness for certain unhealthy foods, its the last thing I focus on. It’s like saying don’t think about a pink elephant. It quickly causes an inner struggle. Instead I like to focus on adding healthy things rather than taking away the trigger foods.
I want to find the reason behind the problem. My client was stuck in the cycle of overeating in the evening, then feeling guilty and therefore try to cut the calories and meals the next day and the cycle would repeat. She didn’t eat breakfast, and by lunch time she was so hungry she would over eat, then again go many hours without food and start binge eating once she got home from work.
It’s a very common pattern. Whether it’s intentional or not. If you don’t eat balanced and enough during the day your body will throw a tantrum in the evening.
You’re not only fighting against emotional urge to eat after a stressful day, you’re also fighting against your hormones. The hormones always win. They’re the strongest force in our bodies. Without them we don’t wake up in the morning ´, we don’t fall asleep, we don’t sweat or feel cold, we don’t cry or feel rage, we don’t feel hungry or full. If the emotions are the steering wheel the hormones is the gas and break pedal. We need to work with them and not against them.
When you let your self get to the stage of being very hungry, it’s too late. Your brain will go for the quickest energy source possible, which is white carbs and sugar. The hunger hormone (ghrelin) is high, we eat faster and before the “full” hormone (leptin) has a change to even it out you have already eaten twice as much as you need.
So instead of focusing on Mias obvious cause to the weight gain, I focused on what happens before. How to prevent it from happening.
During the first session I gave her two tasks, based on foods she likes. We added a breakfast (with a couple of options) and I told her she can eat whatever she wants for lunch but fill half the plate with vegetables. It’s important that the changes are simple and
not too many at the same time. If they require a low level of motivation you’re more likely to stick to them even on the bad days.
I gave her two weeks to work on these changes, and it already brought in results. Because of the breakfast her blood sugar was steady until lunch and she was satisfied with one plate instead of two.
When it was time for more changes she had already repeated the former two steps for 14 days and built in a routine.
Even if she had a bad day the breakfast and vegetables at lunch were already automatic and not too hard of a task to keep up with.
Step by step we changed her eating habits, but keeping the flexibility with food options. After a month I finally started to look at the original “obvious problem” and by that time there wasn’t much left to fix.
Because of the breakfast, lunch and snacks her blood sugar levels were steady and she didn’t have the same cravings as before when she came home from work. After the first month she had already dropped 2 kg.
So what about the unhealthier foods? If you have social events coming up or love that sushi buffet or that ice cream, make room for that and celebrate it. Make it a part of the journey. A positive event to look forward to without guilt. Of course if you eat unhealthy foods every day it’s not going to work. But if you eat 70% well, theres room to eat unhealthier foods 30% of the time and still reach your goals.
If you have a big dinner with all the meals and drinks included, plan ahead, and work around it. You can bring in an extra training, making healthier choices and eat a bit less carbs during the day.
The most important thing of all is to learn how to get back to your eating routines the next day and continue. Routines don’t mean you have to eat the same thing every day, there should always be options, it’s more about the rhythm and the balance of protein, carbs and fat in the foods you eat.
Life is meant to be enjoyed, when you have flexibility in your eating, it has a big effect on the emotional health and your nervous system can relax. To be able to eat all kinds of foods without feeling guilty is freedom.
Mia lost 15 kg of fat within a year and gained muscles. She doesn’t need my guidance anymore, she has become independent and free and I’m extremely proud of her. If she goes on a holiday and gains a bit of weight, she goes back to hear healthy routines when she gets home, goes back to training and the weight will balance itself out again.
Your Relationship With Your Body
Before going on a weight loss journey, whether it’s with a coach or a diet from the internet, the absolutely most important question is why? Is it for yourself, for health reasons, because of pressure from the outside or someone else who wants you to? If it’s not for yourself, then why do you feel the need to change?
Unfortunately we live in extremely difficult times when it comes to beauty ideals, thanks to the internet and social media. There is a huge pressure on how to look. Now it’s not enough to be skinny anymore, you have to be very fit, still have big boobs, a big butt but a small waist. Men have to look like body builders. The more we chase perfection the further away from happiness we get.
This is something I work on with my clients a lot. How they view their own body, how they see themselves. It’s a key part of the journey to success. Working from the inside out, instead of the outside in.
If we constantly criticise and think negatively about ourselves and our looks, even if we lose that weight we may still not be satisfied because our brains are wired that way. We need to break that negative feedback loop. It takes time and work, but this part of the weight loss journey is the most important and makes it so much more easier and enjoyable when you learn to accept your body and love yourself.
We forget to thank our body, be kind to our body. It’s our home that will carry us through our whole life, so we better treat it well with love and kindness.
My Journey
Before I became a Personal Trainer, Wellness- and Nutrition Coach in 2015, I was super strict with myself. All or nothing.
I’ve trained my whole life and come from a family of high achievers.
For years worked out 5-9 times a week, mostly martial arts but also jogging and strength training. I vwas very strict strict with what I ate and always felt wasn’t doing enough. Always aiming for perfection. It was like I was trapped in a self-made jail. It wasn’t until I finally hit the wall and fell to the bottom that I started to see clearly and could finally heal.
My wall was over training syndrome and a mental burn out. My metabolism completely shut down and I gained 12 kg very quickly. I wasn’t allowed to train for months and even if I tried I couldn’t. Even the lightest training would make my pulse hit the roof. Training was my identity. Not training caused a big empty hole in me and I needed to discover who I was without it. I had to take the bull by the horn and stop running away from myself.
It took me a long inner journey to break that pattern. I decided I wanted to go to the root of the problem. I wanted to find out and learn as much as I could about nutrition and emotional wellbeing. I was hungry for knowledge. That’s what lead me to Nutrition and Wellness Coaching.
As I was studying I started to eat and live according to my studies. I was still 10 kg over my previous weight. I cut down on the training and started to eat more. After a couple of
months my body reacted, my metabolism started to work again and within 7 months I had lost extra kg I had gained. I couldn’t believe it. All these years I thought constantly being on a diet and restrict yourself is the way to lose or keep the weight, but no. Training less and eating more was what my body needed.
For 10 years now I lived with freedom, I listen to my body, eat when I’m hungry, stop eating when I’m full and give my body what it needs. I’ve kept my weight steady (+- 2 kg). The over training syndrome was one of the most important lessons. It led me to where I am today and has helped me help hundreds of clients through out the years to reach their goals in a healthy way and I hope I will be able to help many more in the future.
About The Author
Jessica Wolff is a Personal Trainer, Nutrition- and Wellness Coach. For the last 10 years she has worked with hundreds of clients between the ages 12-80. She works from the inside out rather than the outside in. Instead of focusing on the obvious problem, we will focus on the reason behind the problem.
She does not do strict diets or forbidden food lists, because they don't work in the long run. Instead she focuses on long lasting results. Together she will go through your background, current situation and your goals. Based on your lifestyle and routines, she will he make a few changes at the time. She will work on eliminating feelings of guilt, because that's an energy you don't need. Instead we will focus on the good, bring in the good changes, it will leave less space for the bad.
Sources
This blog is based on my experiences with my clients through out the years and based scientific studies and material from the Fitness Academy Of Finland (www.faf.fi)
Hormonitasapaino (hormonal balance) by Kaisa Jaakkola
Liikuntaravitsemus by Olli Ilander www.olliilander.fi