Do Diets Work?

BrightAngel · Post by **BrightAngel** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 3:40 pm

What do YOU think?

http://www.diethobby.com/blog.php?ax=v&nid=635

Ruff · Post by **Ruff** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:30 am

This is what I think.

I started dieting weight 12 stone 2 pounds (77kg, 169 pounds approx.) I know this because I have the little book they gave me. This was 6 months after my no 2 child (now 21) was born. I was still feeding.

I gave up dieting in October 2011 weighting 16 and a half stone (or more...I stopped weighing) (231 pounds, 105kg) I had a third child and tried EVERY SINGLE DIET on the planet.

I am now about 13 stone (82.5kg, 182 pounds). I have been no s-ing and also running (5k, 3 x 10ks) and am training for a half marathon in September.

I think dieting makes you fat.

ZippaDee · Post by **ZippaDee** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 3:47 am

Nope. They haven't worked for me! And that's 18 years of dieting experience talkin'. No more dieting for me. Just good ole fashion common sense eating, which is how I see No S. The way my grandparents ate.

JayEll · Post by **JayEll** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 11:18 am

Diets have worked for me, as long as I've stayed on them. The problem is what happens when I've run out of stamina or just can't stand all the tracking, counting, weighing, measuring.

My experience with No S so far has been one of slow gain, not slow loss. I've found that I'm going to have to modify the program to fit if I want to lose. However, I do think that it's easier for me to follow the No S principles, even if I have to modify them, than it is to go back to the weight loss plans I was following in the past.

r.jean · Post by **r.jean** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 11:53 am

I agree that many diets work short term, and for a few very determined people they may work long term. However, diets do not work for me.

It is also true that you can gain on No S. If you load your plates too high or make unhealthy food choices ALL the time, you will most likely gain. I have found that good common sense about what I put on my plates does it. I make better choices some days than others.

BrightAngel · Post by **BrightAngel** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 12:43 pm

The above responses appear to share the idea
that a "diet" only means following a specific foods weight-loss plan.

Interesting responses to that linked article,
because by almost every standard, No S is a "Diet",
which people use in their quest to lose weight or maintain their current weight,
and my position as shown in the linked article goes even further,
back to the absolutely Basic definition,
that EVERY kind of eating... even without a specific food plan ... is a diet.

ironchef · Post by **ironchef** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:31 pm

BrightAngel wrote:The above responses appear to share the idea that a "diet" only means following a specific foods weight-loss plan.

I think because the question posed was "do diets work?". People tend to think that means, do diets (as in the weight loss kind) work to help one lose weight. If by diet you mean "what someone eats", then I guess you could say that all ways of eating work, by providing nutrients and thus preventing death.

In my experience, weight loss diets (the calorie restriction kind) do "work", but most don't provide a long term solution. For example, I have lost significant amounts of body fat several times by simply writing down what I ate and how much I exercised and calculating the energy in and out to create a deficit. If I didn't lose when averaged over the course of a few weeks, I adjusted to create more of a deficit. This worked excellently (I lost about 13kg in about 18 weeks), and I kept it off for about 6 months. After that time, I got sick of the effort of constantly writing everything down and calculating (oops, had a coffee with milk, so now better only have two baby potatoes at dinner). So, I stopped, and hence re-gained. So I guess, all restricted calorie diets "work". They're just not likely to be sustainable.

It's my belief that most fad diets that claim not be about creating calorie deficit are actually calorie restriction in disguise - i.e. by restricting a certain type of food, the person eats less overall. The reason I was drawn to No-S is the honesty - yes, we're trying to eat less, here are some sensible ways to make eating less a painless habit.

Blithe Morning · Post by **Blithe Morning** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:54 pm

I seem to recall that the old fashioned term was "reducing diet." I have a very vague memory of this from old movies or maybe books/magazines. I am guessing that diet as a prescribed eating plan with the intent of losing weight is just a shortened form of that term.

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Fri Aug 03, 2012 11:19 pm

AS someone else pointed out, are we talking about diet as any food one eats or an attempt to weigh a certain amount?

Baumeister and Tierney in their book on willpower: "To lose weight, the authors suggest, try to make small incremental changes toward a healthier diet, and importantly, never go on a diet."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2 ... ntrol.html
They said previous (in their book) to that statement that a diet was a regimen of food carefully controlled by calorie limits without regard to hunger or satiety but determined by trying overtly to create a calorie deficit by monitoring intake and output.

Though some who have lost weight and kept if off swear by tracking food and counting calories, they represent only a small number of people. In reviewing the diet literature, Baumeister said it has been an abysmal failure for the great majority of people who try it. In fact, most weigh more two years after starting one. I think that trumps the success of the minority. Something about traditional dieting actually makes it more likely the dieter will not learn new habits that reduce intake.

No S actually recommends what Baumeister does. Make decisions about how you will limit yourself in specific situations and stick to it. He wasn't saying weight loss isn't tied to eating less, just that eating less is not successfully tied to counting calories.

I'm also convinced that many people aim at too low a weight and that complicates things. It makes people unnaturally manipulate eating in a way that they don't need to or aren't ready to and ends up backfiring. On my other diet site, it's true that most of the maintainers track their food even after years of maintenance. But they also insist on trying to weigh the same or less than their peers in the poorest countries in the world in which real lack of access to food affects the average weight. Maybe it's partly because the media promotes women who weigh less than the average in those poor countries.

Dale · Post by **Dale** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 7:42 am

I suppose that whatever you eat IS your diet, so you're techinically always on a diet. But I'd tend to use "dieting" to mean watching what you eat in some way (with the purpose of weight control). I think it's the exception for dieting to "work" in the sense of making you lose a large amount of weight and keep it off (we know that most people struggle to lose weight or regain it), but it does work for some people. I suppose we all hope that we're going to be the exception!

You have a great website there, BrightAngel. It's very interesting to read the perspective of one of the exceptions, who has lost a large amount of weight and kept it off. I love your honesty about how little you have to eat to avoid regaining. But I also find it quite scary! I find it very difficult to imagine myself eating like you (in terms of calorie intake and portion size) for the rest of my life. It worries me that the amount I should eat to maintain is actually less than the amount I'm currently eating to lose weight. No wonder maintenance is difficult for people who have been very big!

BrightAngel · Post by **BrightAngel** » Mon Aug 06, 2012 3:00 pm

Dale wrote:You have a great website there, BrightAngel. It's very interesting to read the perspective of one of the exceptions, who has lost a large amount of weight and kept it off. I love your honesty about how little you have to eat to avoid regaining. But I also find it quite scary! I find it very difficult to imagine myself eating like you (in terms of calorie intake and portion size) for the rest of my life. It worries me that the amount I should eat to maintain is actually less than the amount I'm currently eating to lose weight. No wonder maintenance is difficult for people who have been very big!

Thanks Dale.

It IS scarey how little I need to eat to maintain in the normal weight range.
Those weight charts that connect calorie needs to bodyweight
are inaccurate for a great many people.

One thing that people often don't get .... is that THE REALLY SCAREY THING
is how little my body needs in order to maintain my weight ANYWHERE...
even in the morbid obesity weight range....

I didn't get to eat everything I wanted to eat whenever I wanted to eat it,
and still not gain, even at 220 or even 250 lbs.
As a short, older, sedentary woman I was only averaging around 1600 - 1800 calories a day
during that couple of years when I gained from the 160s up into the 190s.
AND my weight was still slowly climbing.

Evidence indicates that is very difficult for me to maintain at any weight.
I can choose to work to maintain in the "normal" range,
OR
I can choose to work to maintain well inside the "obesity" range.
Since I have to work hard anyway, to maintain anywhere,
I'd rather do what it takes to weigh in the normal range.

osoniye · Post by **osoniye** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 12:17 pm

I agree with the statement someone once made "They ALL work if you do 'em!".
It's that (short or) long term compliance that's the problem!

wosnes · Post by **wosnes** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 2:55 pm

osoniye wrote:I agree with the statement someone once made "They ALL work if you do 'em!".
It's that (short or) long term compliance that's the problem!

I think most of them are impossible to stick with in the long term. You're always being deprived of something. Most people can't deal with that for the long term.

I read something interesting recently. In the decade between 1950 and 1960, 5 (FIVE) diet books were published. Now it's probably 5 a week. Interestingly, we were slimmer then.

Over43 · Post by **Over43** » Thu Aug 09, 2012 9:32 pm

Diets do work I believe. I just think that some people's level of obesity is making diets obsolete. For this group I believe a lap-band or gastro surgery is appropriate if that is what they want.

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 12:50 am

On Spark, I know of one woman who has lost over 200 lbs. without surgery and another who has kept off 175 lbs. for several years with diet and exercise. I don't think that will ever be obsolete, but I don't think it has to be the only option, either.

Over43 · Post by **Over43** » Fri Aug 10, 2012 12:49 pm

I was probably over the top on diets being obsolete for the obese. I also know someone who jogged and dieted 200 lbs. off, but that is rare I believe, but heartening.

I think diets work best for the person looking to drop the 20, 30, 40 lbs. Beyond that it becomes incredibely hard for the body to respond to the need to lose wieght "traditionally." In my opinion. It doesn't mean it can't be done it's just near impossible for many.

oolala53 · Post by **oolala53** » Sat Aug 11, 2012 3:16 am

Out of curiosity, I searched diet books on Amazon. I tried searching for a certain year of publication to extrapolate how many books per week were published. I was guessing it's even more than 5 a week. The search wasn't accurate, though. But just diet books yielded 75,268 results. Guessing that at least 80% of them were published in the last 20 years, it works out to 58 titles per week.

And still only a miniscule number of successful weight loss maintainers.

Doesn't discount the fact that eating less is more successful at producing weight loss than exercise, just that most diet books aren't very good at helping people eat less for the long run.