Are you contemplating a diet, or currently dieting? Or, have you tried several diets only to find yourself back to your old unhealthy or overweight self after a couple months? Do you ever start to wonder why diets don’t work? There is a statistic flying around that 95% of all diets fail. I honestly had to search, a lot, to try to find the origin of this statistic. I could only find one article, The 95% Myth, that referenced a 40 year old study of just 100 participants. What I did find, however, is an overwhelming consensus

among medical, fitness, and nutrition professionals and writers that most people fail in their diet efforts, because there are fundamental flaws that come with the conventional approach to dieting. To elaborate further, here are 5 possible reasons why diets don’t work for most of the people, most of the time.

1. The Diet is Product Driven

There is no shortage of lotions and potions for weight loss out there. The weight loss industry topped $64 billion in 2014, according to Marketdata Enterprises, a research firm that tracks the industry. But here is the problem with a product-based diet. Whereas each product probably delivers the benefits it claims to offer, the specific benefits from one or two products can’t begin to address what our bodies need as a whole.

For example, if someone takes a fat burning green tea supplement, perhaps the supplement works at supporting healthy fat burning in some way, but if the body continues to produce excess fat, it becomes impossible to achieve a sustained result from the product. Good products and sensible nutritional supplements can be great, and I even recommend some, but they are no replacement for a healthy lifestyle.

A recent article in Fortune magazine “Lean Times for the Diet Industry” points to current downward trends in diet product spending, backing this point up and demonstrating that more people are turning to real food, whole body, or holistic approaches to their well being and weight management. They are realizing that diets and products that only take isolated stabs at weight loss or other physical symptoms may be the reason why diets don’t work for many people.

2. The Diet is Seen As a Temporary Fix, Not a Lifestyle

Speaking of healthy lifestyles, I believe this is really the only true way to maintain your wellness and weight management objectives, permanently. Perhaps you’ve managed to lose weight in the past, for a special occasion or event. But you inevitably return to your old eating habits once the diet is over. As a result, you relapse back to your pre-diet weight. This will probably happen every time if your diet is a quick fix, rather than a permanent change to make your lifestyle healthier.

The next time you need to lose weight or do some healthy conditioning for a specific reason, consider identifying a few things in your regular diet that you might be able to teach yourself to change permanently. This doesn’t have to mean giving things up forever, but simply managing how much of certain foods you consume on a regular basis. And, instead of approaching dieting as a special occasion or seasonal discipline, consider taking a simple, achievable, long term approach to the diet.

3. The Diet Doesn’t Really Support Good Overall Health

In my opinion, this is probably the main thing keeping many people in a permanent state of diet and health relapse. Many diets are simply not designed to get your whole body balanced and healthy. It’s that simple. When your body isn’t balanced and healthy, inflammation, weight gain, and other maladies are likely to occur.

Not to point a finger, but let’s take the Ketogenic Diet for example. In simple terms, a ketogenic diet is basically depriving the body of energy from carbohydrates so that the body is forced to burn fat reserves as energy, and go into a state of ketosis. This results in impressive weight loss for successful participants.

But forcing the body into ketosis doesn’t necessarily address anything else in the diet that could be making the body unhealthy and causing it to retain or gain weight. The dieter could be eating too much saturated fat, or experiencing acidosis from a pH imbalance, all while starving the body of essential energy sources, nutrients, and phytochemicals from certain foods.

Although I can’t speak to ketosis as a medical professional, it makes sense, and is safe to point out that this kind of diet isn’t really making the whole body healthier in the long run. Once the dieter resumes the old diet, the body will probably put the weight back on again, and maybe even more if it feels it has been starved of energy.

4. Taking An All or Nothing Approach Leads to Feelings of Deprivation

Sometimes I will hear from a client who is starting on a healthier journey, stating, “I feel terrible! I am hungry all the time!” This is because many people assume that to diet means to eat less or deprive themselves of delicious foods. My immediate answer to that statement is, “If you feel hungry, eat something!”

Experiencing hunger is simply a result of your cells telling your stomach they need some nutrition. The key is to make sure you are getting the right kind of nutrition. Also, although I do believe setting a good, achievable healthy challenge and goal is an awesome approach, one must be careful not set an unachievable goal, or to completely cut-off from life’s pleasures. If your diet is making you feel deprived even once a day, it is almost assuredly doomed to failure. 

Try taking an honest look at your weakness foods and finding healthy alternatives, or ways to incorporate a nibble of pleasure into the overall diet program. One of the tools I teach my clients is the use of a “Healthy Food Continuum” that I learned from the book Keep It Simple, Keep It Whole by Alona Pulde, MD and Matthew Lederman, MD. This approach looks at ways to enjoy certain foods in easily controlled moderation so the dieter is not left feeling deprived. At the end of the day, feeling satiated is an important part of our health and well-being, so dieting tactics that lead to feelings of deprivation should probably be avoided or reconsidered.

5. The Dieter Does Not Exercise

There is a saying that you can’t out exercise a bad diet. But if you want to give your diet an awesome helping hand, get some exercise, and get it daily. Diet and proper nutrition, in my opinion are the core root of everything we experience physically.

But so many people go on diets forgetting that part of the natural process of good metabolism and energy burning comes from physical activity. Although I am not a believer in calorie counting, except to make sure you are getting enough of the right kinds of calories each day, I do know that a little physical activity or exercise can help burn calories that could be contributing to stubborn weight retention. This can especially hold true for people who are getting older and experiencing natural metabolism slow-down.

Even if you think you are too busy to exercise, try parking several blocks from work and walking a bit, using the stairs instead of the elevator, or taking a power walk at lunch. See if it is possible to bicycle to work, or see if you can get a treadmill under your feet while you are watching your favorite television show.

There Are Many Other Possible Reasons Why Diets Don’t Work

I could have seriously spent a couple weeks researching this topic. This is just a short list of some of what I think are the more common reasons why people fail in their dieting endeavors. Really, it isn’t as much why diet’s don’t work, but more why they simply become failed, half measured attempts that don’t really give your body what it needs to really flourish and be its best. If there is a way to take the efforts put into one diet, and space it out and convert that effort into an ongoing discipline of healthy eating habits, one can then break free from the vicious cycle of Yo-yo dieting, and achieve sustained, optimal well-being.

The world of nutrition and dieting can be daunting. There is so much information available out there it can really make your head spin. And sometimes it is hard to tell what information is backed by commercial interest, or some other special interest group, that may not necessarily have your individual well-being at heart. It doesn’t take long to start taking your health and weight management objectives away from products, companies, and diet trends and into your own hands. I offer a FREE coaching call that can help you on a healthy road to sensible, empowered, holistic health and weight management. If this article resonates with you, let’s start working on it today! Get your free coaching session here.