Why diets don't work: Stop kidding yourself!

I'm not even going to ask you whether you've tried dieting.

Because somewhere along the way, you'd have known someone who did, and thus would be able to relate to the 'dieting experience'.

If I were to ask you how many people you know who are successful dieters, meaning they have shed some pounds through the process of dieting (the use of the words 'I'm on diet' being the key identifier here) and have kept it that way since, for long term; my hallucination is that you couldn't even name one.

My argument is, the concept that denotes conventional dieting does not work.



Why the concept of 'Dieting' don't work.

What do you think of when you think of dieting?



I think of ........

Christy Chung

Andrea Fonseka

Bernice Liu

Naturally, I think of girls with 'to die for' bodies. But that's just me being sexist ;P

Ok, that was simply a lame excuse to put some chick photos in my blog, to increase readership.... :)


Anyway, let me prove to you that diet don't work, not because we're not capable of controlling our body weight if we want to, but because the concept of dieting as we have come to know it, is counter productive. That's why we often see dieters face the problem of weight rebound.

The reason almost all dieting fails is this (pay attention, this is a biggie):

We attach a time frame to dieting

Yes, it is as simple as that. It is more complicated when we dissect the psychological impact of attaching a time frame to dieting ,whether we do it consciously or subconsciously.

To understand further, we need to know what dieting means to most people.
Ask yourself these questions:

What is the purpose of dieting to you? What is your target weight? What happens when you reach your target weight?
Dieting normally means sticking to a particular regime (meals, exercise, sleep, activities) for a period of time until you reach your target weight.

Normally, nobody tells you what happens when you succeed. Therein lies the problem. More often than not, we are 'forced' to go back to our daily habits before dieting. That is, we live a 'normal' life again.

If you ever start a dieting regime without answering all the three questions above, you're in for failure.
If you think dieting is a method of getting to your target weight and only that, you're in for failure.

Here's the bottom line:

If you do anything short of changing your lifestyle permanently to sustain a healthy weight, you're in for failure.

So many people are afraid of these words: change your lifestyle, permanently. Yet it is the only effective means of achieving and keeping your ideal or healthy weight.

In fact, it is the only means of achieving and keeping anything permanently in life.


Remember this: Change is a conditioning process.

Change is not a switch you flip and get the results for good. Here's a good story by Tony Robbins to illustrate my point:


Tony owns a grand piano he doesn't play, cause he doesn't know how to. He has just got the bucks to buy whatever he fancies even though he doesn't need them, simply because it's cool to be able to own things you don't need. If you know what I mean. What blissful lifestyle ;)

Anyway, one fateful day, he calls a piano tuner-technician to calibrate his piano. You know, a person who come and adjust the strings in a piano to make them sound good again. After the technician worked his magic, when he was about to leave, he told Tony that he'll be coming back the next week. Tony asked him why, and he explained that because the strings were stretched in a certain way for a long period of time, he needs to condition it back to keep it working.

He explained further that even after the second tuning, he would have to come back every month, then every 3 months and after that every 6 months just to keep it working the way it is.
Tony uses this story to explain his brand of change technology, which moves from NLP (Neuro Linguistic programming) to NAC (Neuro Associative Conditioning).



As an expert in personal change, Tony clearly understands that change do not last if not conditioned into our daily life by taking on new habits. Be it bad habits like smoking or unhealthy diets to larger patterns of behavior like financial success, relationship success, peak performance; all needs new habits to calibrate and tune our behaviors to make it consistent. Daily rituals, to keep conditioning our mind, to make it stick.


I repeat, if you ever start a diet regime thinking: "I'm going to stay off deserts/supper/chocolate or I'm hitting the gym 4 times a week....until I get to my ideal weight. Then I can have my deserts/ supper etc, as reward. You are heading for failure.


What to do?

So you see, there is no other way. Those people who you see who succeeded in dieting and kept it that way, have all taken on new habits and behavior to support their weight change. They've changed their lifestyle, in some ways. They are using a conditioning mindset.

If you are going to start dieting, think about what is it that you can change permanently in your life in order to support your new healthy target weight. Think about what new habits you can build into your daily routines like fixed meal time, avoiding junk foods, exercise 3 times a week etc, etc.

You don't even have to do everything at once. Start with a few simple steps and build it from there. It will not just be good for your weight problems, it will be good for your life. You'll have more positive energy and your self esteem will go up for successfully making positive changes of habits.

Remember, you need to change your mindset to change you life. Hit and run diets programmes will not work in the long run, in fact, statistics shows that dieters often put on more weight and becomes heavier than they were after a diet programme! The same is true with hit-and-run mentaility of dieting until you reach a certain weight and then rewarding yourself.



Stop kidding yourself, because you deserve a better lifestyle.