Studies have shown that the most effective way to address chronic disease is through positive lifestyle changes, with diet being one of the most important. Unfortunately, the term diet can be misleading. It is often interpreted as a program, usually temporary in nature, whose primary goal is weight loss. This is not what they are referring to.
Webster’s Dictionary defines Diet as:
- food and drink regularly provided or consumed: a diet of fruits and vegetables or a vegetarian diet
- habitual nourishment: links between diet and disease
These are the definitions we use when we mention diet. Specifically, we are talking about consuming foods that nourish our body and promote health. We believe eating this type of diet gives our body its best chance to succeed.
Webster’s has additional definitions for diet, including:
- a regimen of eating and drinking sparingly so as to reduce one’s weight
- to cause to eat and drink sparingly or according to prescribed rules
- reduced in or free from calories: a diet soft drink
- promoting weight loss (as by depressing appetite)
Today we will focus on these alternate definitions, specifically “promoting weight loss“.
So, what’s the problem?
There is a popular misconception that Weight Loss = Improved Health. Yes, losing weight can certainly help improve our health. Obesity is an epidemic in this country and most of the chronic diseases we suffer from (including diabetes, heart disease and cancer) are caused by obesity and other lifestyle factors. For this reason, it makes sense to lose weight for improved health. That doesn’t mean losing weight always makes you healthier. The problem is HOW we lose weight and WHY we attempt to lose it.
Notice I said “attempt”.
Psychology Today reported that 95% of people who lose weight by dieting will regain it in 1-5 years. Other studies show numbers as high as 97%. Worse, many dieters actually gain more weight back than they lost.
“You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back… We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people.” – Traci Mann, UCLA Associate Professor of Psychology
One of my favorite questions is: “How is that working for you?”. It’s one of the best and simplest ways to measure results. People have all kinds of opinions to support their particular point-of-view, but just look at the results. In this case the results are telling: diets don’t work!
We spend over $66 billion each year on diet-related books, weight-loss programs, foods and medications, and yet we’re fatter and sicker than ever. Livestrong said: “Americans spend more money on dieting, dieting products and weight loss surgery than any other people in the world.”
In spite of all of this dieting, over 80% of our country is overweight, and almost 40% are considered obese. And we’re trending in the wrong direction. The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that by 2030, half of all adults will be obese.
The obesity epidemic is causing all kinds of other problems. Chronic diseases (including autoimmune) are at their worst levels in history. Obesity-related illness carries an estimated annual cost of $190 billion.
It’s obvious that whatever we’re doing ain’t working. The more money we spend on dieting, the fatter and sicker we get. But why?
Why We Diet
We live in a superficial society that places too much emphasis on how a person looks, affecting their body image and self esteem. As a result, the goal of most people who implement some kind of dietary change is weight loss, not health. It’s easy to see. It’s how we measure the “success” of these diets: by how many pounds or inches we’ve lost, or how we look in a mirror.
Sometimes health is a factor in a person’s decision to diet, it’s just not the primary motivator or measure of success in most cases. As a result, most diets sacrifice the secondary goal of health to reach the primary goal of weight loss. Weight Loss = Improved Health is not a guarantee. Many methods of weight loss are actually detrimental to your health, which brings us to the next question…
Are Diets Healthy?
Good health depends on dietary balance. Yet some of the most popular diets tell you to cut out all fats, cut out all carbs, reduce calories to a minimum (starve yourself), or eat massive amounts of protein and fat. The fact is, our bodies need all of these macro nutrients (in the right quantities) to be healthy. Cutting out things like carbs completely means you’re depriving your body of the whole foods (fruits, vegetables, grains) necessary for good health. Just as important is the quality of food we consume. There are good fats and bad fats, good carbs and bad carbs, good protein and bad protein. But just cutting one of them out of your diet completely is unhealthy, and a prescription for disease in the long-term.
Even worse, diets adversely affect our metabolism. A study by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of contestants from the show The Biggest Loser, showed that when the contestants dieted and lost weight, their resting metabolism (how much energy your body uses when at rest) slowed down – possibly from a time in our evolution when food scarcity was common. Unfortunately, they discovered that when the contestants gained back some of their weight, their resting metabolism didn’t speed up along with it. “Instead, in a cruel twist, it remained low, burning about 700 fewer calories per day than it did before they started losing weight in the first place.” This would explain why most people who diet end up gaining more weight than they lost.
Over the long-term, dieting is extremely hard on your body. Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function.
Most commercial diets make audacious claims regarding health benefits, with little-to-no evidence to back them up. Some examples:
The Paleo Diet says we should eat like cavemen did, before farming and agriculture came into being. The hypothesis is that this is how we were designed to eat, and what’s good for cavemen should work for us. Sounds logical. Unfortunately, it’s largely just theory. It has practically no basis in fact and there are no long-term studies proving this.
Paleo recommends staying away from all grains and legumes, foods that are loaded with nutrients and fiber. Studies have shown that whole grains are the building blocks of a healthy diet and linked to reduced risk of many chronic diseases.
As one example, new research published in the European Journal of Nutrition found that people eating a Paleo-type diet have nearly double the levels of a blood biomarker linked to heart disease than those who follow a typical diet. They concluded that a Paleo-type diet promotes unhealthy bacteria in the gastrointestinal tract. They attribute this to the absence of grains in the diet, which actually promote good bacteria. Their results showed that “microbiota composition associated with the high fat, low carbohydrate intake may not be beneficial for long-term health.”
This diet specifies eating grass-fed meats, but grass-fed meat constitutes a very small percentage of what’s actually consumed. This means the cows you’re eating were fed the same grains the diet says to stay away from, with some added chemicals and antibiotics to boot.
Besides, how do we know whether cavemen were healthy? How long did they live? What kinds of diseases did they suffer from? Just because cavemen might have eaten this diet doesn’t mean it was good for them. Or you.
The Atkins Diet warns us to stay away from all carbs, including fruits, vegetables and grains, which just happen to be widely recognized as the basis of a healthy diet. Instead, this diet recommends eating large quantities of meats and fats. Study after study have shown this to be a prescription for heart disease, cancer and a host of other ailments.
Still, may people bought into this diet without seriously considering its health implications. At the height of its popularity, one in eleven North American adults claimed to be on a low-carb diet.
So, is it healthy? Again, look at the results. How did that diet work for its founder? A report by the New York medical examiner’s office a year after his death showed that he had a history of heart attacks, congestive heart failure and hypertension.
The Keto (or Ketogenic) Diet is another ultra low-carb diet. Instead of reviewing it myself, here’s a quote from Harvard Medical School:
“A ketogenic diet could be an interesting alternative to treat certain conditions, and may accelerate weight loss. But it is hard to follow and it can be heavy on red meat and other fatty, processed, and salty foods that are notoriously unhealthy. We also do not know much about its long-term effects, probably because it’s so hard to stick with that people can’t eat this way for a long time. It is also important to remember that “yo-yo diets” that lead to rapid weight loss fluctuation are associated with increased mortality. Instead of engaging in the next popular diet that would last only a few weeks to months (for most people that includes a ketogenic diet), try to embrace change that is sustainable over the long term. A balanced, unprocessed diet, rich in very colorful fruits and vegetables, lean meats, fish, whole grains, nuts, seeds, olive oil, and lots of water seems to have the best evidence for a long, healthier, vibrant life.”
I couldn’t have said it better.
Weight Watchers is known for its points, packaged foods and support groups. It’s been around for a long time and many people have successfully lost weight while on this diet. The same questions apply: is the diet healthy, and did participants keep the weight off?
Raise your hand if you ever lost weight on this diet and then put it back on. Most people I know, including myself, fall into that category. I guess it’s possible to keep the weight off if you don’t mind measuring food and counting points for the rest of your life.
What about health? If there is one thing that most diets can agree on, it’s to stay away from processed foods. It is almost universally accepted that processed foods are some of the most harmful substances you can put in your body. Yet Weight Watchers (along with many other diets) has a whole line of processed, packaged foods. As is common with processed foods, many are high in sodium, low in fiber and full of questionable ingredients. The next time you go to the freezer section, look at the ingredients on one of their boxes. Scary. Unless you like a bunch of chemicals and words you can’t pronounce. It’s obvious this diet primarily focuses on weight loss, not health.
Still, Weight Watchers remains one of the most commercially successful diet companies in the world, with 3.6 million active users and $1.2 billion in revenue in 2016.
Can you lose weight on these diets? Sure. Will you keep it off? The odds overwhelmingly say no. Are they healthy long-term? Probably not.
Beware of Diet Goals
Take a minute and think about the primary objectives of most diets: lose weight, get smaller, look better. Most people set goals like “lose 15 pounds” or “fit into a size 6” or “get down to a 34 waist” or “look awesome for the upcoming wedding or reunion”.
Goals are great for many things, and are largely responsible for the general progress of mankind, but they can cause a lot of problems in a weight-loss diet. Let’s say you set the audacious goal of losing 30 pounds in 6 months. You plan to weigh yourself every day to track your progress. What are some of the potential issues with this?
- You hit a plateau and stop making progress. Plateaus happen. Our progress can slow down or stop. Sometimes we even go backwards. Often, we get frustrated, lose our motivation and give up. Sometimes we’ll double-down and do even more unhealthy things (skipping meals, weight-loss medications, bulimia, etc.) to achieve our goal.
- You get to 6 months and only lost 20 pounds. You failed! You may feel defeated, and only because you didn’t hit an arbitrary number. What if your goal was to lose 15 pounds? You’d be ecstatic to lose 20. Same weight loss, completely different response.
- You achieve your goal. This one’s tricky. How do you stay motivated to do the right thing after you’ve achieved your goal? Often, we lose our motivation and fall off the wagon. That’s the challenge with anything finite. You lost the weight. The wedding is over. Motivation gone. Back to your old, unhealthy lifestyle habits.
A Better Way
So how do you avoid these pitfalls? First, redefine your definition of success. Instead of focusing on weight and appearance, what if your goal was to be as healthy as possible? To get off all of your medications? To have a higher quality of life? To be able to play with your kids or grand kids?
What if your goal was to eliminate your disease?
That was our goal, nothing short of eliminating my lupus and getting me off all of my medications. Weight loss was never the goal, even though I lost 40 pounds on a whole food, plant-based diet and have kept it off. Looks were certainly not the goal, although I’ve had many compliments since I’ve been disease-free. I guess it’s not surprising when you feel great and aren’t bloated by steroids or covered in hives. When you take care of the inside, it shows on the outside.
“I don’t use the scale as a measure of progress because for most people it keeps the focus off health and promotes unhealthy attitudes toward body image and self worth.” —Julie Duffy Dillon RD, owner, Julie Dillon Consulting + BirdHouse Nutrition Therapy, Greensboro, NC
Second, don’t weigh yourself. It’s like playing Russian roulette with your motivation. Watching the scale may be a motivator when you’re losing weight, but it has the opposite affect when you plateau or go backwards. The key to good health is to make positive lifestyle changes. That means they’re for life. Don’t risk sabotaging them because you didn’t lose weight one week.
Achieving and Maintaining a Healthy Weight
Here are a few tips for losing weight and keeping it off, while also promoting good health:
- Don’t try to lose it quickly. Rapid weight loss rarely works long-term and is hard on your body. You didn’t put the weight on overnight, don’t expect to lose it overnight. Proper diet and lifestyle changes will get you to your natural weight in the right time. You’ll be much more likely to keep it off, and your health will improve in the process.
- Don’t focus on dramatic calorie restriction or extreme diets that promote macro-nutrient (carbs, fat, protein) imbalances. As we’ve already established, the first will only slow your metabolism, resulting in more weight gain later on. The other is just plain bad for your long-term health.
- Stay away from foods known to cause both weight gain and health problems. This includes anything fried or processed, fast food, refined grains, sugars (including sodas and fruit juices) and saturated fats.
- Eat a balanced diet primarily of plant-based whole foods. Decades of research has proven this to be the most effective way of maintaining a healthy weight and preventing disease. No other diet can say this. Eating this way will lower your caloric intake naturally. The fiber it provides will keep you feeling full. The healthy doses of macro and micro nutrients gives your body everything it needs to maintain good health.
- Get enough sleep. Research has shown that poor sleep is a major risk factor for weight gain and obesity, affecting your hormones and fat cells. Sleep deprivation can increase your appetite, reduce your metabolism and even increase insulin resistance, leading to diabetes. Aim to get 7-8 hours of quality sleep each night. More information can be found here.
- Exercise! At its most basic, weight loss is nothing more than consuming fewer calories than you burn. This is why the goal of most diets is to reduce caloric intake: the more weight you want to lose (or the faster), the greater the reduction. In the extreme, this leads to a slower metabolism and ultimately more weight gain. Instead, move more. Less than 5% of adults participate in 30 minutes of physical activity each day. Exercise not only burns calories, it raises your metabolism, so your body continues to burn more calories for a period afterwards. Exercise also provides a whole host of other health benefits, including improved sleep, mood and immune function, lower blood pressure, the list goes on.
What’s Your Definition of Success?
My goal to be disease-free has allowed me to sustain the lifestyle changes we implemented years ago. For me, not being chronically ill and dependent on drugs was a much bigger motivator than not regaining 10 pounds.
Remember, it’s not about your weight or how you look. It’s about your health and well-being. It’s about how you feel. Dieting may give you some short-term benefits, but often at the cost of your long-term health. Focus on your health, and those other things will take care of themselves.
If you’ve been on the diet roller-coaster for a while, I have one question: “How is that working for you?”
