Why Do Diets Fail?

You may have had a similar experience to this one once or twice before:

You start a new diet plan, full of hope and determination. This is going to be it, you believe. This time you will lose all those excess pounds you've been carrying.  

You start off pretty well and see the pounds go off in the first week or 10 days. You feel happy and confident that you've found the perfect diet plan to help you finally lose weight.

But then, you suddenly seem to be stuck in a rut. You climb on the scale and see that your weight hasn't budged. When you check 2-3 days later on, this is still the case. But why? You have no idea.

You try to keep the diet even better, hoping to restart the weight loss process again. But nothing seems to work. In fact, you haven't just stalled, you're starting to gain back weight at a slow but sure pace.

95% of Diets Fail

 Yes, those are the dismal statistics. Only 1 person out of 20 will succeed to lose weight and keep it off while on a diet. The others will either fail to lose weight to begin with or will gain it back later on.

But why is this happening? Why do diets fail?

There are a number of reasons which contribute to this. Let's go through some of the more common ones:

Most Diets Are Deprivation Plans

Most diets fall into what I call the low-something category. They work by depriving your body of some nutrient or another. There are low-carb diets, low-fat diet, no-fat diets, low-protein diets, no-suger diets, and so on and so on. Do you see a patter here?

These diets are really deprivation eating plans in disguise. They tell you to stop eating a certain nutrient like carbs or fat in the hope of forcing you to cut down on your calories. This may work for a while but is not productive in the long run.

Your body needs a resonable supply of all the major nutrients like carbs, protein, and fats (yes, even fats). It can't do without them. By trying to cut down too much on one nutrient for too long, you're actually starving your body. You may be getting enough calories, but not enough of a certain nutrient.

Welcome metabolic slowdown

When our body feels that it's starving it reacts immediately by slowing our metabolism down.

This is an internal survival mechanism our body developed after millions of years of evolution and it's something which we need to work with not against.

What happens when you go on deprivation diets is that you lose weight in the beginning (which is what the people who market them are counting on) but then your metabolism begins to slow down progressively so that your weight loss slows further and further until it comes to a point in which it stops.

Some people see their metabolism slow down so much that they try to cut down on the calories they eat even further. This causes the metabolism to slow down even more, until, when you finally feel unable to stick with such a depriving eating routine and begin to eat more, your metabolism is so slow that you start to gain back the weight that you've lost in the beginning.

Deprivation of the Body and Mind

Being on a low-something diet isn't just depriving your body but it is also a mental deprivation.

It's hard to maintain a strict eating plan like so many of these diets prescribe for a length of time. It isn't just hard physically, but emotionally as well.

Depriving your body of nutrients or a sufficient amount of calories is a sure way to induce cravings and emotional eating.

It is also something which means that sooner or later (sooner in all likelihood) you will stop following the diet plan as closely as you had at the beginning. By that time, your metabolism will be so slow that any increase in calories will translate to immediate weight gain

What Can You Do Then?

 The first thing you need to do is stay clear of diets which tell you that you must avoid eating a certain food item, nutrients, or just cut down massively on your overall calorie intake.

You need to find a weight loss plan which is flexible enough to be sustainable, which lets you eat a reasonable amount of food from all food groups. One such weight loss plan is the Fat Loss 4 Idiots diet. This diet lets you eat 4 meals each day of various food items and changes what you eat from one day to the next to avoid boredom.

You can read more about it here: Fat Loss 4 Idiots Review

Another way for you to overcome the inherent problems with diet plans is to just eat sensibly without following a detailed plan. Often, weight loss plans work for some people but not for others simply because we are not the same. Each of us has his or her own metabolic type and genetic makeup. Therefore, it is often better to fit your eating plan to you rather than trying to fit yourself to an eating plan.

A recommended nutrition book which can help you eat right to burn body fat in general and belly fat in particular without following a guided weight loss plan is the diet solution program. This is a comprehensive nutrition book which can teach you how to eat not just to burn fat but to lead a healthy life in general.

You can read more about it here: Diet Solution Program Review

Of course, adding physical exercise as a routine can help with any weight loss process. It is also important to remain active for your health in general.

The key is to pick a diet and fitness plan which fits into your lifestyle, something you can work with and feel passionate about. It is also important to learn to deal with failure in the right way. Put it behind you can try another thing until you succeed.