A nutritional expert has shared six reasons why people are not losing weight.
Some people are looking to lose weight for health reasons, to feel more body confident or to improve fitness. More than half of people living in Britain said they begin to start a diet or fitness regime – fully expecting to fail, according to studies.
Because of this, a massive number of people are serial dieters who skip from one eating plan to the next, trying to find best way to lose weight and keep it off. There are thousands of diets to choose from, but the overall rule is if you want to lose weight, get toned, build muscle, or even just improve your energy levels, you’ll probably need to change what you eat.
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Vidur Saini, Nutrition expert from Fitness Volt said: “Provided that your diet of choice meets your caloric needs, it will have the desired effect. For example, consume fewer calories than you need, and you will burn fat and lose weight, but consume more than you need, and you will gain weight.
“However, most people fail to stick with their diet long enough for it to work sustainably. They are strong out of the gate but soon fall off the wagon and return to their previously sub-optimal eating plan.
“That’s why so many of us lose weight only to regain it shortly afterwards, and it seems long-term, sustainable weight loss is rare nowadays. Fortunately, healthy eating doesn’t have to be complicated or unpleasant, and weight management doesn’t have to take over your life.
“You don’t even have to give up your favourite foods. However, you will need to quit looking for short-term fixes and adopt healthier long-term habits.”
Below, Vidur from Fitness Volt shares six reasons why most diets fail.
1. Foods are too restrictive
Most diets ban certain food or food groups. For example, the paleo diet excludes all processed foods, while keto severely limits your carb intake. Other diets will cut out sugar or alcohol.
The problem according to Vidur is that cutting out certain foods can help contribute to your daily calorie deficit, this technique is also guaranteed to trigger cravings. Essentially, any diet that bans a particular food or food group will invariably result in cravings, driving people to cheat on their diet.
Vidur said the smallest amount of this particular food or drink to allow your body to feel like it isn’t being deprived of something. Everything in moderation.
2. The cost of ingredients
A diet of healthy, fresh ingredients is always good, but with food being one of life’s unavoidable expenses, it will be harder for people to sustain this diet plan long-term if you aren’t always financially stable. For example, some diets specify that people must eat expensive foods and that somehow these products are better for weight loss than those that are more reasonably priced.
Organic vegetables and grass-fed beef from free-roaming cattle cost a lot more than the basics from Costco but nutritionally are not all that different. They certainly won’t help people lose weight faster said Vidur.
For a diet to be sustainable, people need to be comfortable with how much your food costs. For example, if people's grocery bill doubles overnight, they have got a readymade excuse for quitting their new eating plan.
3. Too complicated
To make diets unique, they are often unnecessarily complicated. This complexity can often cause people to make mistakes or just give up after a while. Food combing diets are a perfect example of this.
Some may say things like “you can’t eat fat and carbs in the same meal,” which looks okay on paper but makes meal prep far more complicated than it needs to be. Ultimately, for any diet to work, it needs to be simple enough to follow every day.
4. Perfection or failure
Diets can often be very prescriptive and allow no variation. However, in everyday life, any diet can be difficult to stick to.
Perhaps people have a friend's birthday or an off day and decide to indulge in something sweet. The reality is that people's diets don't have to be perfect, it just needs to be pretty good most of the time- which is more than enough to reach weight loss goals.
5. Not catered for the long-term
Putting a timeframe on any diet sets people up for failure. Some of the most common ways diets are advertised are through their quick fix time stamp, like “lose 30 pounds in 90 days” or “30-day get ripped plan.”
Excess body fat accumulates over many years, and no one goes to bed lean and then wakes up fat. Achieving a body goal could take many months – even years. To achieve a significant result in just a few weeks, any diet must be very restrictive and, therefore, it’ll be unsustainable as peoples body will soon put the weight back on it dramatically lost.
Before considering any diet, ask yourself, “can I follow it for the next 6-12 months?”
6. Based on little or no science
Some diets are based on very flawed science or may not be based on any science at all, according to Vidur. One example of this is calorie-burning or negative-calorie foods, such as celery.
No food burns more calories than it contains, and these claims are very misleading. Effective diets work by manipulating calorie balance. Consume fewer calories, and people's body will make up the shortfall by using stored body fat for energy.
No deficit means no fat burning. There are no shortcuts around this law of thermodynamics and as a rule, if a diet promises something that sounds too good to be true, it probably is, so don’t fall for it.
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