Why are all diets bad?

A diet is when we deliberately limit our intake of certain foods in order to lose weight. This is what we do to change our body and stop doing it when the goal is reached.

Eating healthy foods, paying attention to portion sizes, and thinking twice before eating something high in calories but low in nutritional value are all useful skills. But it’s definitely not helpful to follow meal plans that tell you what, how much, and how often you should eat, whether you’re full or hungry. And it’s even less useful to follow diets that you first go on and then you quit.

Negative consequences will not keep you waiting even if you are not formally on a diet, but think like a dieter. If you count grams of fat, choose high-protein foods and avoid carbohydrates, rely on “safe” foods, berate yourself for eating the wrong things, consciously or unconsciously undereat (and overeat because of this later), drink special drinks or coffee to quench your hunger, or decide what else you can eat today based on what you’ve already eaten – it’s the same as if you were on a diet.

Have you noticed that once you go on a diet, and you stop thinking about anything other than food? Even if it didn’t bother you before. You notice that you are constantly preoccupied with what you will have for lunch or dinner, whether you can have a snack, what everyone else is eating, or even what you will allow yourself to eat tomorrow. What does all this mean?

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• Diet for the brain

Mind and body are inextricably linked, and this becomes especially noticeable when you are on a diet. The body and mind are adapted to survive, whether in times of famine or abundance. When food supplies are drastically reduced, the body and mind go into survival mode. The body slows down the metabolism in an attempt to save every calorie, and the mind sets itself the most important task – to get food. Result? You may suddenly find yourself compiling dinner menus, collecting recipes from magazines, cooking for others (even if you don’t eat any of it), and even dreaming about food. The meaning of this message is clear: the body needs food, and therefore your mind wants the same.

After a few days of food restriction, you are likely to feel restless or depressed. The reason is that you have deprived yourself of the pleasure that delicious food brought you, and you have not compensated for this loss in any way. So you have a feeling of emptiness.

You may suddenly want to spend more time alone – socializing takes too much energy – and your self-esteem will drop. Alas, the more depressed, anxious and lonely you feel, the more you think about food.

Some may last longer than others, but sooner or later the result will be the same – a breakdown. You eat something “unauthorized” and feel that the prohibition has been violated. So you give up and start eating. You are relieved – you can finally relax and do what you wanted all this time. Perhaps you are in a state similar to intoxication or a trance and you just can’t stop. Your body seems to take on a will of its own, it wants to be filled, no matter what you think about it. In the end, it may happen that at one meal you will consume much more food than you did in the past before you went on a diet.

Are you crazy? Not at all. This is a completely normal and even healthy reaction to a half-starvation time. In the distant past, such a reaction was quite justified. It was perfectly natural for our ancient ancestors to eat well after a hunger strike. They were never sure when they could eat next time, and if they were lucky, they tried to fill up for the future. Therefore, after a period of malnutrition, their appetite increased – they continued to experience hunger after the amount of food that they had enough in abundant times. The same thing happens to you when you limit yourself. Suddenly you find yourself in a tendency to overeat, and you no longer have enough of what you previously considered sufficient. Restrictive diets cause relapses.

The psychological consequences of diets were clearly shown in the classic study of malnutrition (1950, Ancel Keys, University of Minnesota). Scientists observed during the year 36 healthy, young, psychologically stable men. During the first three months, the men ate a normal amount of food, the next six months they ate only half of the original portion, and in the last 3 months the portion was gradually increased.

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• Break free from diet obsession

After a period of malnutrition, the men were preoccupied with nutrition, talking about it all the time, reading cookbooks, collecting recipes, and daydreaming about food. When the table was laid, many tried to eat longer and finish the meal last. Over time, these men became increasingly depressed, irritable, and anxious. After half a year spent starving, the men ate almost constantly, sometimes overeating. They said that as soon as they had eaten, they already felt hungry again. Some ate so much that they felt sick, but still they did not feel full. While most returned to normal eating habits within 5 months of the end of the study, some continued to overeat.

The same behaviors are characteristic of dieters: preoccupation with food, anxiety, depression, irritability; a tendency to drop the diet and eat more than they ate before they started the diet; the habit of overeating even after the end of the diet.

* Adapted from an article by Cynthia Bulik and Nadine Taylor. Cynthia Bulik is an eating disorder specialist and professor at the University of North Carolina. Nadine Taylor is a nutritionist and member of the Women’s Health Council of the American Nutraceutical Association.

Read more: http://womenshealth.about.com/od/fitnessandhealth/a/exrunawayeating.htm