The death of diets - a new weight management theory

"Diet is Die with a t"

Garfield the cat

It's no secret - diets don't work but understanding why they don't work is a key to better eating habits. The first thing is to look at what a diet is. It's a temporary restriction of food or calories that results in weight loss. This sounds fine and dandy but there are a couple of problems with this. First problem is, if you just restrict calories then you may experience weight loss but it's probably not all fat. There is a very real difference between weight loss and fat loss. If you just want to lose weight then stop drinking water and take natural diuretics - bingo, instant weight loss that doesn't last! The next problem is that the weight you lose doesn't stay off. Statistics show that 95% of the people who lose weight on a diet don't keep it off and we've all seen the high profile battles celebrities such as Kirstie Alley and Oprah Winfrey have had with their weight over the years and all the different diets people try. Check your local book store and you'll find that there's no shortage of diets to choose from. Diets ranging from the Atkins diet, Blood Type diet, Cabbage Soup diet, the Hay diet, Paleolithic diet, the Pritikin diet, The Zone diet and organisations such as Jenny Craig and Weightwatchers all say their way will work for you.

However following a diet that drastically cuts down calories is a short term strategy to lose weight that ultimately fails because the human body is very smart. Your body has an in-built survival mechanism called the starvation response and when you cut down your calories it kicks in making it physiologically impossible to lose weight with this method alone. This starvation response served us well hundreds and thousands of years ago when we didn't know when our next meal was coming. Our body would conserve calories and burn off fat stores and muscles for energy so that we would survive. So when we cut calories, our bodies think we're starving and start working against our conscious desire. Today we have food readily available but are working with a physiological system that can't tell the difference between dieting and starving!

Many people who try diets are doomed for failure for another reason - they're emotional eaters. Emotional eaters are those who eat for psychological reasons regardless of whether they're physically hungry or not. Common reasons for people who emotionally eat are to cope with stressful events, cope with depression and an inability to express their emotions, eating out of boredom, sheer habit, social reasons or just to feel good. We are at our happiest when we eat so it's no surprise that we turn to food to make ourselves feel better. Just changing your eating habits and leaving the emotional issues unaddressed means that you'll soon be back to your old ways, but this time feeling guiltier because you didn't continue with the positive change.

You need to live consciously and break free from the unconscious thought, emotional and behavioural patterns that limit you. Our patterns around eating is an area that most of us need to address and here are six top tips for better eating habits.

1. Forget diets, create habits!

Give up the idea of diets and concentrate on creating positive life-long eating habits. It takes time (at least 21 consecutive days) to create a habit but once formed, they can be with you for life.

2. Mindful eating

When you eat, eat. Don't watch TV or do some other activity while you're eating. People who eat while watching TV, on the computer or similarly distracted aren't focused on how much they're eating and tend to overeat. You'll eat slower and this gives your body time to signal that you've had enough.

3. Size matters

The bigger the plate, the bigger the meal. The bigger the spoon, the bigger the serving. So use smaller plates and serving spoons and when shopping avoid the two for one specials as you'll just end up eating more.

4. Plan ahead

Planning your meals takes a bit more effort but is essential for conscious living. Knowing what you're going to eat cuts down the impulsive, last minute (usually unhealthy) food purchase. You can also decide in advance how much you actually want to eat for each meal to avoid overeating.

5. Button pushers

Become aware of what or who pushes your psychological eating triggers. It could be emotions, events, places or people that make you eat rather than hunger itself. Is it stress, work parties, buffet restaurants or your mother-in-law that makes you eat out of habit? When you eat, ask yourself the question, "Why am I eating this now?"

6. Cut some slack

If you do have a binge meal, don't feel guilty about it. If it was the exception and not the rule then recognise it for what it was and know that it's not the end of your healthy eating habits.

If you are carrying excess fat then it's important you find out your body fat percentage and work towards decreasing this. Using a measure like Body Mass Index (BMI) is useless as it doesn't take into account lean tissue versus body fat. According to the BMI, many professional athletes would be described as morbidly obese. Separating your body weight into body fat and lean body mass means you can monitor your progress on losing fat and you don't fall into the trap of being a slave to the scales. Remember there's a difference between losing weight and losing fat!

Here are four top tips to help lose excess body fat:

1. Reduce calories marginally

If you want to lose excess body fat then you need to start by making only a small calorie reduction (15 - 20% of your current calorie maintenance level). A good nutritionist should be able to tell you your calorie maintenance level. Once you achieve your desired level of weight then you can go back to your maintenance level. A drastic reduction will trigger the starvation response and this is something you want to avoid.

2. Increase exercise

Exercise keeps your blood sugar stable, enhances your digestive system, increases your metabolism, strengthens your heart and stabilises your mood. Ensure you have a combination of aerobic (walking, jogging, swimming, cycling) and anaerobic (weight training, yoga, Pilates, sprint training) exercise and do something physical daily.

3. Aim for small losses

Aim to decrease your weight by no more than one kilogram per week. If you're losing more than that then you're probably losing muscle, which is not good as muscle cells burn more energy than any other cell in your body. Muscle is your metabolic furnace so you want to maintain muscle and that's why anaerobic exercise (lifting weights) should be a part of your exercise program. It may seem slow but you do want this weight to stay off right?

4. Don't starve yourself - eat more often!

No, it's not a contradiction here. You can still decrease your calorie intake but eat smaller meals more often. Many people have found that eating five to six smaller meals a day (eating every three hours) works best for them rather than the traditional three square meals a day. Of course, it's more important what and how much you eat rather than when you eat. However, you need to eat breakfast because it increases your metabolism and those who skip breakfast tend to end up eating more calories throughout the day.

Move away from diets and move towards healthy eating habits. People will respond differently to different things so experiment with these tips till you find the best way for you. Once you have a strategy that works best for you, turn this into a habit. The good news is that over time this healthy way of living becomes your automatic pilot and having an abundance of energy becomes your natural state.

Wade Jackson

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