Diets - the 'too-strict' diet

One of the most frequent complaints that dieters give for not being able to complete a diet is that they just couldn’t stick to it.  OK, so you’ve heard this before but listen carefully to them for the reason they often give is that it was too strict.  Well, a diet has to be strict to let you lose weight so what are we to do?

Humans are designed to eat a wide range of food and, in fact, we need that range of food to gather all the building blocks required for a healthy body.  If you restrict that range then your body will do it’s best to make you eat the food that you are missing - in order to make up the shortfall.

Looked at another way, your body is used to eating a certain variety of different foods which constitutes the way that you normally eat and will try its best to ensure that you go on eating it whatever happens.

This is one reason why diets are so hard to keep to since they usually insist that there are certain food that you can no longer eat, even though your body can see them all around you and knows that it wants them. 

You can now begin to see the problem that you have when you try to remove a food or, worse, a food group from your diet - your eyes see the food and your body tells you that you need it but the diet says you can't have it.  So who wins?

OK, you're right!  Your drive to eat that food will become overpowering until you eventually give in.  Many dieters already know this to their cost!

But this is not all, for most diets also restrict the amount that you eat as well as the type of food and the result of this is that you become hungry.  Now hunger is a much more powerful drive than many people imagine and most people in the Western World (at least in modern times) have, thankfully, never experienced it before.

Believe me, hunger will make you eat no matter how good your intentions or no matter how strong your reserve, you just will not be able to resist it.

It follows, therefore, that any diet which takes out whole food groups or which severely restricts the number of calories that you can eat is doomed to failure in the long term.

You also know that a diet like this is not worth following for the short term since the weight loss will be pursued, once you quit the diet, by a weight gain that sometimes takes you over your starting weight!

I'm afraid this is dismal reading, but the question remains - just how do you diet then?  The answer is in choosing the right diet, that is, one that restricts you but does not restrict you too much. 

Firstly, it must not curtail the variety of food that you eat, allowing you to eat from all the food groups if possible. 

Secondly, it should not restrict too much the number of calories that you eat.  Ideally, it should be just less than the amount that you need.

This is the way that many calorie controlled diets work.  These let you eat most any food you want but, by using a rationing system of points or similar, they keep your calorie intake to just below the amount that you require but not so far below that you get ravenously hungry.

Because of this, it is possible to follow these diets for a long time and they still remain both healthy and capable of letting you lose the pounds one or two at a week.  At the end of the day that is still good weight loss and it is also the sort of weight loss that is sustainable.

The other advantage with these diets is that they help you to change your lifestyle for one that is healthier and more in keeping with modern thinking.

So, before you embark on that diet, review the way it works and see that it meets the criteria above.  Then, and I believe this is most important, try it for a fortnight and see how you get on.  Only choose it if you are sure that you can get on with it and stay with it over the long term.