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Why diets
don’t work?
It is a matter of fact that dieting doesn’t
work. It never has , and it never will. The sheer number
should prove this to you. How many diets have there been
over the last twenty years? Fifty ?One hundred? Magazine
readers are constantly plagued by the promise on the
cover "to take off 5 kilos in two weeks" with
tips or with one or another diet made up to sell
magazines. If they really did work would there be a need
for an unending chain of new ones ?
Why don’t diets work? The answer is quite simple.
What do you think about when you’re on a diet? Just
like all others on diet, you are usually thinking about
what you are going to eat when the ordeal is finally
over. How can you possibly succeed on your diet when all
your thinking about is food? Depriving yourself is not
the answer to healthy permanent weight loss. It usually
causes you to binge later on, which complicates the
problem. Deprivation and binging becomes a vicious cycle,
and that’s just one of the many problems with
dieting.
Another is that diets are temporary ; therefore the
results too have to be temporary. Permanent measures
bring about permanent results. Temporary measures bring
about temporary results. "I’ve been on every
diet that has ever come my way, and nothing seems to
work" Why have you been on every diet ? You have
been on every diet without success because dieting is the
wrong approach! Diets fail because of the regimentation
involved. Very few of us can be regimented successfully
for long when itcomes to food.
When we go on a diet, our systems are thrown into turmoil
while they try to adopt to a new regimen. They then must
readopt to old patterns when the regimen ends. It’s
like taking a metal rod and bending it over and over
again. Eventually it will become weak and break. If you
jerk your body back and forth and over and over again by
dieting, it will become weak and break down.
Confusion and frustration are rampant among dieters. Most
of the diets contradict one another. One popular diet
says to eat more proteins and very few carbohydrates.
Another equally popular diet says to eat more
carbohydrates and very little protein. Can both be right?
Yet another says to eat a small portion of whatever you
like, but be sure to exercise and be positive. One more
says you can eat anything you can dream of just weight it
first and yet another says you should adhere to its
programme for only two weeks at a time. The most
dangerous of all is the latest diet craze that
substitutes drugs and nutritional powders for real food,
in the absence of strict medical supervision.
The cost to one’s well-being from these have to be
measured. Yet many people, not having an alternative,
continue to do what they have always done - diet -
because they’ve never been presented with any viable
alternative. They continue their search for that one
panacea that will end - once and for all - their battle
of the bulge.If I lost weight very quickly by severe
dieting or crash methods will it be a permanent loss?
It is not difficult for you to diagnose yourself as
over- weight or even obese ; but it is outside your
capability to diagnose accurately the causes for your
weight problem. In other words a person trying to lose
weight very quickly by severe dieting or crash methods
such as medically unsupervised fasting, severe starvation
and so on, is making no effort to correct the original
cause of his excess weight. For this reason, there are
countless people who half-starve themselves both
quantitatively and nutritionally to lose weight only to
gain it back, usually with additional kilos.
Three things make it extremely difficult to maintain a
long term loss by severe dieting or crash methods. First,
you have no well-balanced dietary guidelines by which to
revise your eating habits, and without these it is
impossible to maintain healthy low weight. Second, weight
lost by crash dieting isn’t likely to stay lost.
Recent studies show conclusively that not all obesity is
caused simply by overeating, although, in most instances
this may have triggered it. Third, crash dieting throws
your body system out of gear and therefore when you
resume regular eating your metabolic system may not be
behaving properly. IN fact, with crash dieting, your body
may be storing considerable fat, simply because your food
is not being used or burnt properly.
How
will crash dieting make me fat?
Most crash diets are based on two assumptions :-
- Diets do not affect
the speed at which body works - the metabolic
rate.
- Weight lost on a
crash diet is mostly fat.
Any diet that promises an
initial weight loss of five to seven kilos a week in fat
is misleading. The body’s first reaction to a diet
which deprives body of essential food is to draw on the
energy that is immediately available. This is not fat. It
is glycogen, a carbohydrate stored in solution with water
in the muscles and liver. Glycogen is the body’s
immediately available source of energy and can be
converted into fuel for the brain.
Once a dieter’s body has adopted to such a diet by
releasing glycogen and shedding, water, it will tend to
lose both fat and muscle. The body of an overweight
sedentary dieter tends to lose more muscle than fat.
Have you ever noticed how people on quick weight loss
diets grow gaunt faced, the face appearing drawn and
haggard, while say, their upper arms, hips or thighs,
seem to remain as heavy as ever? This is not an illusion.
The body not getting enough fuel from a crash diet turns
to what reserves it can muster. Obtaining, energy from
vital muscle tissue about the face and neck may be far
easier for the body than obtaining energy from the tough,
hard, long entrenched fats on upper arms, thighs or hips.
The dieter loses weight, but does not lose much fat, and
he loses almost no fat from the places where it is most
unsightly and, possibly, the greatest threat to his
health.
Another reason is that the dieter’s metabolic rate
slows down to adapt to decreased and subnutritional food
intake. As the metabolic rate drops, the dieter finds it
more and more difficult to lose weight.
The more severe the diet, the more you slow down your
metabolic rate as the body is deprived of essential food.
This process can be dangerous if the diet is extreme or
prolonged or if dieting is repeated over several years.
What
are the dangers of dieting ?
People who are malnourished because they can’t
help it ( the very poor), or don’t know the basic
principles of nutrition or because they are on some crash
or crazy diet or starve themselves, suffer from what is
scientifically called "Negative Nitrogen
Balance" which simply means your body is putting out
more nitrogen than it is taking in. When this happens
your body loses weight but not necessarily fat. During
negative nitrogen balance, your muscles, your kidney,
your liver and other organs become smaller. You cannot
afford to lose much of these kinds of tissue, because
some of it, brain tissue, for example, is irresplaceable.
Contrary to popular belief, in starvation fat cells never
disappear in number. This was dramatically demonstrated
by a research team at Rockfeller University, U.S.A. where
rats were fed barely to keep them alive. After about a
month the animals had used up reserve fat for energy and
began consuming muscle, organs and connective tissue but
not fat cells. "Fat cells appear to be fully
protected during starvation," says Dr. Irving Faust,
one member of the Rockfeller team.
If you starve or half starve for a long time, you will
eventually start losing considerable fat but by then you
have endangered your life. Someone who has maintained
negative nitrogen balance through insufficient eating
over a long period of time is less resistant to disease
and is less likely to survive any serious disease he
contracts.
Most of the time most of us are in positive nitrogen
balance. Usually the nitrogen our body consumes through
food is equal to the nitrogen that it gives out as waste.
New cells replace old cells ; new nitrogen replaces old.
It is as simple as that.
A negative nitrogen balance means dangerous business and
a warning against starving yourself or experimenting with
diets and formulas that are subnutritional.
Then
why does one resort to such unhealthy and dangerous quick
weight loss diets ?
It is natural and understandable that if you have 15
to 40 kilos to shed, you want to do it in the quickest
possible way. So you convince yourself that using a crash
diet will accomplish the goal in the shortest time.
Drastic measures very often produce drastic results, and
it is quite possible for you to end up with serious
damage to one or more of your vital organs.
Lets look at the history of N.L. a forty-three-year old
who had a weight problem throughout her adult life.
Without consulting a doctor she went on a crash diet to
shed her weight off fast.
In the first week of her crash dieting, she lost five
kilos. The second week, she lost three kilos ; and began
to suffer from loss of hair, weakness, headaches and
occasional giddy spells. She discontinued her diet, but
her giddiness persisted and she started regaining lost
weight. By the time she sought help she was 18 kilos
overweight.
A thorough physical examination and blood tests showed
her to be suffering from severe nutritional anaemia a
condition where the hemoglobin level goes down due to
faulty diet. Along with the treatment for anaemia the
patient was placed on a well-balanced diet containing
essential nutrients required by the body and within ten
months she had reduced herself to her ideal weight and
has stayed that way for the past six years. This case is
a clear example of what a wrong kind of diet can do to
the unsuspecting person.
Obese person know intellectually that it is very wrong
and dangerous to lose weight without medical supervision.
But the well-planned weight loss programme of the
nutrition oriented doctor limits weight loss to 1 to 1.5
kilos a week. Therefore it is no wonder that a woman
wanting to lose 15 kilos in just six weeks so that she
can appear at her daughter’s wedding looking slim
and trim, resorts to crash programmes on her own prompted
by some magazine, suggestions from relatives, friends and
well-wishers or some self-styled nutrition-guru who
places her on one or the other fad diets.
What
should then be a safe and ideal weight loss? Why?
Frustrated fatties have long been told it is their
own fault, that they eat too much, that they are lazy and
have no will power. This is not the case. Let me explain
this in detail.
In many, so called unlucky individuals with normal
weight, certain factors in the beginning are laid down in
the body which predispose them to obesity later in life.
These factors for example, could be physiological i.e.
lowered metabolism according to Modern Science or
increased Kapha (structure) factor as per Ayurvedic
Doctrines (both discussed in detail in this book). The
process of becoming obese i.e. deposition and storage of
excess fat in the body in the initial stages occurs in a
very subtle and imperceptible manner without any obvious
indication, hence unknown to the affected person.
Gradually but steadily this fat accumulation increases.
The source of this accumulated fat is food eaten but not
oxidized i.e. burnt or utilized for the various functions
of the body. The body as a result suffers from
malnutrition and this causes damage to the body again in
a very subtle and imperceptible manner without any overt
symptoms in the affected person. Now in the presence of
malnutrition the body craves for food, felt by the
affected person as an increase in hunger. The person
starts eating more, gradually but certainly, in the
absence of nutritional knowhow, he eats easily available
artificial and foodless, empty processed foods, wrong
foods , etc. lacking nutritional value. His effort to
appease this increased hunger and to satisfy the
physiological needs of the body thus proves futile.
Lacking basic nourishment the body requirements still
remain unfulfilled. Chronic malnutrition now sets in.
When this happens, there is literally a metabolic tearing
down of muscles and organs to extract energy content
faster, than building up replacements for the body cells.
As a result, the body is no longer in a state of dynamic
equilibrium. At this stage the process of becoming obese
is fully established in the body.
It is proved that a fat man becomes fat faster. In other
words the complete phenomenon described above has a
snowballing effect and with the rapid increase in body
fat, chronic malnutrition and increased hunger pangs the
person’s appetite becomes irregular, erratic and
excessive. His physical activity decreases on account of
weakness due to inadequate nourishment and he becomes
lethargic. At this stage the tip of the iceberg of
obesity shows up. But this warning sign is ignored either
due to negligence or lack of moral obligation for
one’s body or in our country as a sign of prosperity
and a healthy body. The process of becoming obese is left
unattended and thus continues and finally the person
becomes a full-fledged case of obesity. The accumulation
of fat in the body shows itself in the form of bulges.
The obese victim at this stage is blamed by relatives,
friends, well-wishers and psyched by articles, magazines
and fitness advocates that his overweight condition is
due to his now apparent overeating and obvious lack of
physical exercise and he unfortunately starts believing
his massively publicized half-baked truth used for
commercial exploitation of the innocent and vulnerable
fat citizens.
Remember being obese is not your fault. Obesity is a
disease and not a question of overeating or lack of
exercise. It is because of medical ignorance, an
underlying cause of obesity and lack of nutritional
knowledge that you are fat. The unfortunate individual
suddenly aware of his ugly and diseased condition wants
to get rid of it and that too immediately. It has taken
years to grow fat, atleast it will take that many weeks
to get rid of it. But the fat man is impatient. He wants
to lose weight and get slim and trim immediately and in
his eagerness jeopardizes his well-being on some
unscientific Quick Weight Loss Programme.
A safe, permanent and ideal weight loss is that which is
gradual and which does not exceed 3 to 4 kilos a month ,
according to British Heart Foundation (1989).
It is very important to build health at the same time as
reducing fat. It is also essential simultaneously to deal
successfully with the causes underlying obesity.
There is a very great difference between slim and being
thin and scraggy, and there is also a great difference
between merely losing weight and creating well-balanced
body. All too often people who follow quick weight loss
programme succeed in losing weight, but they also lose
their good looks and good temper. They look drawn and
haggard, feel irritable and tired. Their skin does not
get sufficient time to readjust itself to the sudden loss
of underlying tissue and consequently, gets wrinkled,
losing its natural elasticity and glow. Therefore a
programme which improves the health at the same time as
it reduces the weight should compulsorily take a gradual,
course, the weight loss not exceeding 4 to 5 kilos a
month. Such scientific and medically sound programmes
have proved to give far more lasting results towards
maintenance of a healthy low weight.
What is
a fad diet?
A fad diet is any popular "crash" diet
designed for quick weight loss and not supervised by a
doctor. Usually the dieter eats a high proportion of one
category of food. By definition, the fad diet excludes
the other nutrients necessary for maintaining a healthy
body while losing weight.
What
are the dangers of "high protein" diets ?
In the popular, or fad "high protein" diet,
you eat practically nothing but chicken, meat, cheese,
eggs, etc. These diets work by totally eliminating intake
of carbohydrate thereby throwing the body out of gear.
This situation is similar to severe starvation since
protein and fat are broken down in an attempt to sustain
life process. Incomplete oxidation or burning of fatty
acids and certain proteins takes place, resulting into
formation of acidic ketone bodies, i.e. acetone and
acetoacetic acid. This condition is known as ketosis. The
ketone bodies are thrown out of the body through urine
and they pull water along with it by osmosis - a process
by which water passes from lower concentration to that of
higher concentration, when seperated by a semi- permeable
membrane.
Weight is lost fast and dramatically but unfortunately
this loss is due to water loss rather than fat loss.
The water losses which would normally be promptly made
up, by drinking large amounts of fluids are not made up
here because ketosis produces quite a nausea and serves
to limit the intake of food. The weight losses, sometimes
4 to 5 kilos a day are dramatic. But remember that no one
can live for very long in a continuous ketotic state.
Proteins contain purines which form uric acid in the
body, resulting in gouty arthritis or kidney stones, in
susceptible persons. In extreme and rare cases retention
of urea can cause coma and death. If you are not
otherwise reasonably healthy when you start this diet,
you may be playing with your life.
What
are the dangers of a "high fat" diet ?
Overabundance of fat in the diet can cause diarrhoea.
Constant diarrhoea will cause weight loss because if the
food is constantly being expelled from the body, it has
little or no chance to be absorbed.
A constant diarrhoea can cause loss of essential vitamins
and minerals along with loss of fluids rich in necessary
electrolytes, such as magnesium, potassium and sodium.
This can lead to serious dehydration and if fluids and
other essential elements are not replaced quickly, coma
and death can result.
Does
this mean I should go on a fat free or boiled food diet ?
With all this talk about fat, it is natural for you
to think that it would be best to avoid fat altogether.
But according to the British Heart Foundation a healthy
diet should contain some fat. Unless advised specifically
by your doctor, a diet free of fat can be harmful. Here
are some of the things fat does :
- Fat helps transport
certain essential vitamins through the body.
These vitamins - A, D, K and E are fat soluble,
which is to say they dissolve in the fats and
oils we eat.
- There are three
essential fats which the body is not able to
manufacture and therefore must be included in the
daily diet. If these fats are not present, the
result may be dry skin and scalp.
- Fats keep the skin
soft, supple, glowing and in good tone, by
working among the cells of the skin.
- Fat under the skin
protects nerves and muscles from sudden changes
of temperature.
- Vital organs, kidney,
heart and liver are cushioned by a small bed of
fat.
- Fats are important
lubricants in the joints.
- Fat is important in
controlling. Without it you suffer from more or
less constant feeling of emptiness and you are
likely to ear more than you normally would - yet
another reason why low fat diet fails.
- Two researches Dr.
William Copper and James Hart, of the Lee
Foundation for Nutritional Research in Mil
Wankee, Wisconsin, U.S.A. report that the
essential fats are needed for all glandular
health, and particularly for healthy prostate
glands in men.
What
are the dangers of "low -carbohydrate" diet ?
On a "low-carbohydrate" diet you may
develop hypoglycemia ( low blood sugar). Because of low
concentration of glucose or sugar in circulating blood,
your brain is not properly nourished nor is your retina.
People with hypoglycemia complain of their mental
efficiency being slowed down, dizziness, fatigue,
irritability, and in advanced cases loss of sight and
even death can result.
Only a doctor can determine how much carbohydrate you
must have. People foolish enough to practice
self-diagnosis and follow "low - carbohydrate "
fat diets may be headed for serious trouble.
What
about "high carbohydrate" diets ?
A "high-carbohydrate" diet includes
carbohydrate rich, starchy and sugary foods which are
deficient in essential vitamins and minerals required for
maintaining good health. The presence of too much
carbohydrate -rich food impedes the fat-mobilizing
activity of the pituitary glands. What is fat-mobilizing
? It is a stage the body undergoes when ridding itself of
fat. Furthermore, the extra carbohydrate increases the
deposition of fat around the body.
What
are "meal supplements " for quick weight loss?
A "meal supplement" is a flavoured powder
containing essential nutrients in the dosage required to
meet the daily needs of the body.
A dieter on the meal supplement or "liquid
diet" takes in no solid food for upto weeks and
replaces one or more meal with the "meal supplement
". Weight loss is quick upto 3 to 4 kilos a week.
The liquid diets should be administered under medical
supervision, in some cases as part of a hospital based
programme. Every patient must be checked for blood
pressure, heart - rate and blood chemistry at least twice
a month to ensure that there are no medical
complications.
Liquid diets can have side effects. They include fatigue,
dry skin, chills, even hair loss, nausea, constipation,
dizziness, depression.
Liquid diet or not, willingness to change is the ultimate
key to keeping weight off for good. If you are looking
for someone else to do it for you, you are bound to fail.
Only by taking personal responsibility for your own
eating behaviour can you look forward to a long- term
success in treating obesity.
What is
a well-balanced diet?
A well-balanced diet is one in which carbohydrate,
protein, fat, vitamins and minerals are kept in correct
proportion to meet all the requirements of your body
towards passive health.
International organizations such as TOPS - Take Off
Pounds Sensibly of America and WWA - Weight Watchers
Association of Canada after a ten year research study for
evaluation of various diets and their effects on the
weight of obese persons, have conclusively proved that
the only way to ensure safe, healthy and permanent weight
loss is to follow " a nutritionally well-balanced
diet."
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