Conor Pope tackles the subjects of diets today: a timely one, as this is the key time of the year for the diet industry, who will be hoping that we’re all looking for quick ways to shift some of that Christmas weight. It’s a really good piece and cuts to the heart of the problem with diets: they’re unhealthy, expensive and don’t work. There’s a lot of useful info in the article:
- Lifestyle change (healtheir eating, more exercise) is the only thing that will bring about long-term change in your weight.
- Diets stop working for most people after six months even if they stick to them.
- Before embarking on any diet programme, consumers should find out the percentage of all participants who completed it, the percentage who had achieved various degrees of weight loss and the proportion of that weight loss that was maintained at one, three, and five years.
It’s really good to see a voice of reason on this topic. Dieting culture has gone bananas. Never forget that it’s big business – the diet industry is worth over $50 billion a year in the US. I feel it’s a feminist issue as well, as women are strongly encouraged by popular culture to have a dysfunctional relationship with food, and it starts from a really early age. Crash diets only encourage this cycle of depriving yourself and then bingeing, and they also load every interaction with food with guilt or smugness. All you need to know about losing weight is that you should eat healtheir and exercise more. Now sign up to the CheapEats SuperDiet, where we tell you that advice every day and only charge you €9.99 each time!
What do you feel about diets? Do you ever try them?
A New Decade’s Resolution: Quit Dieting (Huffington Post)