The Failure of Most Diet Food Plans

The failure of most diet food plans is that they are not designed to be healthy or sustainable for the human body.

Most people who attempt to lose weight using diet food plans, often otherwise referred to as fad diets, are not going to succeed at losing weight. Furthermore, even the ones who do succeed are likely to regain the weight once they go back to eating normally.

What drives diet food plans is deprivation. Deprivation can work in the short term, but overall people need balanced diets in order to thrive. People become overweight because they eat too much food that does not actually nourish them.

Thus, they remain hungry, not because they haven’t eaten enough calories, but because they have not provided their bodies what they need to function optimally.

Their diets are not balanced. Diet food plans work because they aim to correct this imbalance; however, they can backfire in many ways. These plans deprive the dieter of vital nutrients, leading to eventual health problems, or they can cause the dieter to have uncontrollable cravings for the forbidden foods, and eventually backslide, which can reverse any weight loss progress.

The added stress, guilt and shame of “failing” to stick to their impossible diet can cause the dieter to eat even more of the forbidden food, which can result in increased weight gain. The failure of most diet food plans leads dieters to think something is wrong with them or that they cannot possibly lose weight or have a healthy body.

A better long-term solution is to change one’s diet for the long term. Instead of cutting out all carbs, for instance, whole-grain carbs should be consumed once or twice a week. Instead of cutting out all fat, healthy fat, such as that included in avocadoes, olives, and nuts, should be consumed.

Unfortunately, because this change is often less drastic than a diet food plan, weight loss is consequently less drastic. People tend to abandon this more sensible advice and try diets with which they can see more immediate results. But changing one's diet and eating healthier in general is much easier to maintain over the long haul.

People who no longer “diet” and simply eat well often experience more satiety and hence have less of a tendency to overeat, which over time will result in weight loss, and will protect overweight people from the failure of most diet food plans.