Maybe it’s a New Year’s resolution, you’re over the holiday meals and need to kick things back into a routine, or you’ve been wanting to try something new out. You Google the best diet, go to the grocery store (or stay at home with water and lemon, if you found that one online), and you begin the agonizing, infamous routine of dieting. Here’s a somewhat scary statistic: 91% of college girls have attempted to control their weight through dieting; isn’t that a crazy number?! Only 9% haven’t tried it out, which is a mere handful of girls at UNCG. But out of all those girls who try dieting, why aren’t they all successful? Why are diets not working if there are so many?! Over time, it gets pretty frustrating to end up back at square one, looking nothing like that model you saw on the website with the diet that said you would.
Friend, I know the feeling. My first year of college, in the health sense, was definitely my worst; I gained a bit of weight and am still trying to figure out how to get back to my skinny, high school self. I’m a nutrition major, so I cringe with shame knowing now exactly what those packs of Top Ramen and spoonfuls of Ben & Jerry’s were doing to me without my old high school athlete metabolism. I’ve dabbled at Whole30, gave vegetarianism a shot for about two seconds, tried eating just fruit and calling it a meal, and so much more with no results. Maybe a pound or two lost, but nothing even close to being back to that size two.
What gives? Well, now that I’ve gone further into my major and been educated a little more to understand the world of diet fads, some new light has been shed on my understanding of how diets work. The truth is.. THEY. DON’T. Yep. You read all the way down to this part of the article, maybe in hopes of finding some new diet you can start on, just to read that they don’t work. Let me clarify on that; diet’s don’t work for the vast majority of people who try them. Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem.. You name it, and you’ll see those people with the “before and after” photos that show seemingly dramatic results. The key is, however, that they don’t show the results over a longer period of time after losing all of that weight; after three years, about 65% of people who try dieting return to their pre-dieting weight. If it’s a crash diet we’re talking about (a diet in which calories are severely restricted and weight loss is rapid), only about 5% of people keep the weight off. It’s so much easier to regain weight than it is to lose it because most people revert to their old eating habits after losing their desired amount of weight. That being said, how do the other 35%, or 5%, of people keep themselves from regaining the weight?
Two words: reasonable routine. I’ve put those words together to accurately and truthfully describe the key to getting in shape and staying that way for a lifetime. Let me elaborate; you need to be feeding your body a reasonable amount of healthy foods, and have a reasonable amount of physical activity, and keep that as a routine for the majority of the time. There are, of course, the holidays and special occasions, but that’s why I said it’s reasonable. It’s fair to assume that most of us don’t have healthy holiday meals, but it’s only a few times during the year, and food is something that you should enjoy. Nothing is enjoyable when you’re constantly restricting yourself.
So, how does this whole reasonable routine work with food and exercise? Stay tuned, folks! Dieting 101 is going to be a series of multiple articles, and my personal favorite, food, is up next! Until then, feel free to check out the two sources I used to write about dieting and maintaining weight loss, they have a few more interesting statistics.