Let's say you want to lose weight, you could try going on a trendy diet — cut out carbohydrates, perhaps, or fat. Or cut out everything except cabbage soup or grapefruit. You could cut out food altogether and drink only diet shakes. No doubt you'd lose weight for a month or two, maybe longer. But then something would probably nudge you away from your diet—a vacation, a stressful couple of days, or just phenomenal boredom with the deprivation. And if you're like most people, the pounds would gradually come back.
The Dieting Pattern
Diets work only while you're on them, nutritionists have observed over and over again. In fact, the faster people lose weight on a diet, the more rapidly they regain it, according to David L. Katz, a professor of preventive medicine at Yale University, who has just completed a review of about 500 diet studies from the past four decades. "Most diets involve a way of eating that is intrinsically unpleasant or unhealthy," he says, "and that is why people go off them and then gain the weight back."
It's a pattern that's familiar to almost anyone who has tried fad diets. Yet people return to Atkins, the Zone, South Beach, and other plans like moths to a porch light. Why? "Because desperation breeds gullibility," says Katz. "People want to lose weight so much that their common sense shuts off."
Americans spend a staggering $30 billion a year trying to lose weight, according to a 2002 report by the Federal Trade Commission. (That's nearly five times as much as the federal government spent on school lunch programs that year.) Yet two-thirds of us are still overweight — and growing. The average American, whether woman or man, weighs about 24 pounds more today than in 1960. (The average woman used to weigh 140. Now she's 164.) Blame it on bigger portions, greater availability of cheap food, more laborsaving appliances, extra time in front of the TV, or all of the above, but the numbers on the American scale keep going up.
A Diet Alternative
Instead of another diet, maybe it's time to learn to control weight through truly healthy eating. This is what nutritionists and doctors would like us to do. The trick is to look back to the days before gargantuan portions and sedentary living and rediscover the habits of moderation.
The good news is that healthy eating requires no excruciating patches of hunger or longing for forbidden foods. You'll probably discover new foods to enjoy. And, in the long run, life will be easier, because you'll be off the diet shuttle for good. Katz and other nutrition experts have seen what it takes to succeed. Real Simple has tapped into their collective wisdom to create a commonsense strategy for controlling weight. Much of this advice may be familiar. But it bears repeating because of its proven effectiveness in accomplishing lasting weight loss.
