3 Reasons why calorie based diets don't work

A while ago someone told me that many women have tried over 40 diets by the time they are 40. For many of these women this has meant at least two diets a year, sometimes more. If the first diet had been successful they wouldn't have needed to try yet another diet. These women will also tell you that whilst they were successful in the early stages of each diet the results were always the same: the diet was not as successful in the long term for a variety of reasons and to add to this they weigh more after each diet than they did before.

Logic would appear to dictate that weight management is simple maths: value of food in must be the same as the value of food used up by the body. In other words a large meal is going to require a lot of physical exercise to use up all the energy consumed. And there is some truth in this, but it isn't the whole story.

Dr Rick Kausman, a medical doctor specialising in healthy weight management, says that when people attempt to manage their weight by only focusing on their calorie control they are going to fail. There are many reasons why this is the case and here are 3 of them:

• When you start to deny yourself food to loose weight through counting calories your 'caveman' part of your brain interprets this as 'famine'. It thoughtfully changes how your body utilises the fuel you feed it and saves as much of the energy that it can through chemical changes in the cell, and it also ensures that you expend less energy. This way it can store a greater amount of the food that you eat as fat to help you get through the famine.
• Counting calories to loose weight is not resourceful in the long term. To be resourceful your eating habits need to be obtainable AND sustainable, and going without voluntarily is not sustainable in the long term. When you focus on your overall health and on developing life-long healthy habits you will be able to obtain and sustain these for permanent results.
• Motivation is very short lived. Many of the well-known fitness experts have shared the ways that they ensure that they exercise every day through routine and determination. They don't feel motivated to leap out of bed in the cold and the dark at 5am in the morning or to go to every training session. They have developed habits that assist them to maintain their routines. It is the same with weight management. Whilst most people start their calorie controlled diets with lots of motivation this is short-lived because by its very nature it feels like deprivation and hard work.

Developing habits that are holistic and include changes to encompass several areas of your life offer life-long opportunities to improve your health and weight management.

warmest wishes
Sarah