The Problem With Diets and Weight Loss Programs
Slimming diets and programs give money and power to manufacturers while worsening health problems for users.
Dieting can be broadly understood as any means that (1) promises weight loss to overweight people and (2) is based on external control that is sudden, total and time-limited.
Dieting encompasses many different diets, diet plans and dietary principles, all of which essentially involve restrictive eating via external control.
Restrictions can focus on the amount and/or type of food that is allowed and forbidden to eat - always separated by concrete, clear boundaries.
Exercise and medication can also be used for dieting and weight loss when these means are prescribed to the user, whose task it is then to comply with the external program.
The common features of these different means of dieting are psychological. A diet is an external program that is followed for a period of time in order to achieve weight loss. The user's role psychologically across the different means is to adhere to the program. It requires a high degree of motivation, self-control and obedience from the user to be an adherent.
Being on a diet also requires a high level of willingness to sacrifice freedom. It's the trade-off that happens in all diets: the user sacrifices some of their freedom in order to be rewarded with weight loss. The question that too few ask themselves is whether this sacrifice of freedom is beneficial or harmful.
Countless scientific studies of overweight people on various diets speak for themselves: any diet will result in weight loss as long as you adhere to the diet sufficiently. When you stop the diet, your weight starts to rise back to your starting weight. This well-documented pattern is seen with both dieting as a diet plan and as a medication. The weight loss achieved on a diet is not maintained.
Quite a few users gain even more weight after the diet than they lost during the diet. There can be both physiological and psychological reasons for this, such as inappropriate changes in metabolism and cravings that persist after dieting.
Dieting increases the risk of eating disorders, including anorexia, bulimia and BED (Binge Eating Disorder). It impairs mental health. Dieting also impairs physical health if weight loss is not maintained. Thus, it is physiologically significantly healthier to be stably overweight than to lose weight while dieting and gain weight again afterwards, again and again.
There is a simultaneous learning of helplessness from dieting as they are all based on external control and suppression of self-determination. This learned helplessness can spread to other areas of life and health.
The always certain effect of dieting is that there is a transfer of power and money from the individual to something external. This transfer also means that there are huge economic and political interests in maintaining the belief in dieting as a solution to obesity. This is reflected in research, where there is a shocking lack of development and documentation of the effect of freedom-based, holistic treatment of obesity. However, there is sufficient evidence to put forward a well-founded hypothesis that freedom-based obesity treatment leads to slower but continuous and ultimately significantly greater and more stable weight loss, as opposed to dieting, which leads to faster weight loss that is transient. It can also be argued that both physical, mental and social health is improved with freedom instead of dieting.
There are at least two different healthy alternatives to dieting: one that focuses on health instead of weight loss (equilibrium) and another that focuses on both health and weight loss (small steps). These two alternatives both place greater importance on psychological factors for health than physical weight loss itself. Within this overall alternative weight loss paradigm, very different weight trajectories can result depending on the specific methods and principles of teaching and guiding users. But it's always fundamentally about helping overweight people make the most of their freedom, including the freedom to eat the way they want. It's also always about letting go of the excessive, unrealistic control of body weight.
