You’ve been lied to and here’s the proof.

Graphic Art - Weight Cycling Industry

Content warning: Use of those crappy “O” words often used to define health and disparage because citing research.

Moving away from diets can feel like a salmon swimming against the stream.

Keep in mind: even though the struggle is tough for the fish, they are doing what is innate and true. Opting out of diet culture in the long term will bring you health and peace through your own innate wisdom.

We have been lied to. Researchers know that diets don’t work for most people.

A 2007 study reviewed outcomes from long-term calorie controlled diet plans to determine if they were a successful way to treat “obesity.” The researchers found 1/3 to 2/3 of dieters regained more weight than was lost. Further, dieters did not experience any significant health improvements (Mann et al 2007 and Bacon and Aphamor 2011).

Several twin studies have considered whether genetics has a part in weight gain from dieting. A 2012 twin study (K H Pietiläinen, S E Saarni, J Kaprio and A Rissanen 2012), found a dieting twin to be 2 to 3 times more likely to be “overweight” than his non-dieting twin. Even more, they found the more one dieted they more they weighed!

Did you know dieting predicts weight gain?

Dr. Deb Burgard, eating disorder psychologist, has said, “Instead of the weight loss industry we need to call it the Weigh Cycling Industry.”

Weight cycling is another term for yo-yo dieting. Have you tried a diet, lost weight, and then regained in all back?

Did you regain more?

After a break, did you start another diet then lose weight?

But, after a period of time, did you notice the weight crept back on?

If you identify with this process you have weight cycled. Your weight going up then down then up again leads to poorer health. Research has found weight cycling to promote high blood pressure, high cholesterol, high insulin levels, and high blood sugar. Dieting has been associated with food obsessing, binge eating, and eating outside of hunger (Haines & Neumark-Sztainer 2006).

Instead of helping you keep weight off, improve your health, and help you feel better about yourself dieting contributes to your binge eating and weight gain. Moving away from dieting will move you closer to Food Peace™.

There is no research to date that shows any diet keeps weight off for more than one year. Most research articles on health benefits of weight loss stop the study at one year or earlier.

When you’ve dieted, did you find you could do the diet plan for 12 weeks or 6 months? Then, soon thereafter, you “fell off the wagon”? Research on weight loss show success and health improvements at 3 and 6 months too.

Keep this in mind: you are not the exception rather the rule.

Weight loss doesn’t work for most people long-term. Research supports this.

You didn’t fail, the diet did.

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