The Diet Doesn't Work!

"The Diet doesn't Work!"

This statement came from a young woman I hadn't seen in a year. I was dumbfounded for a number of reasons. The first of which is that when I, or my counsellors, are not following someone, it's impossible to know what they are eating. Worse, there are many factors beyond food that sabotage our efforts. Stress is one of the biggest factors. Stress affects cortisol and insulin, both of which are fat storage hormones.

Sleep, or interrupted sleep, is another. If we are not getting sufficient sleep there is alteration of the hormone leptin (downward metabolism), and ghrelin (stomach hormone that makes us hungry).

Activity levels are another thing that may impact on our inability to lose weight. If we are not helping people to be more active (not just gym activities, but just moving more) then our efforts to lose weight may be a bit slower.

However, the greatest problem I have, is that we are all metabolically different. Some store fat more readily than others, and some burn more calories at rest and exercise than others. Here, we have to teach great patience because there is an illusion out there, that if we simply drop a number of "calories" per day, we should at least lose 2 pounds per week. Not true, simply because we cannot accurately know every person's true resting metabolic rate. This differs in everyone and all those machines which want to tell us we need a 'minimum' of 1200 calories per day, are simply using guess work.

Losing weight and keeping it off is an incredibly difficult journey because we are dealing with so many variables. Food, exercise, shift work, circadian rhythms, drugs people are on which cause weight gain, sleep, stress both at work and home, pain, fatigue....and on and on it goes.

Because of the multitude of issues we are all dealing with, I must teach patience. Yes, some will lose weight steadily (doesn't mean they will keep it off), but others will lose slowly, or go down in a series of plateaus at various stages. During all of this, you and I cannot get simply 'food focused'. What else is going on in your life that may be affecting you? Is there anything we can do about it? Chronic stress (work, home life, kids, parents, finances) truly impacts us the most. It seems counterintuitive, but exercise is the best way to help reduce stress; yet when we are stressed we are tired and avoid the very thing that would help.

In summary, I simply want to say that it's usually not as simple as saying 'the diet doesn't work', it's usually a constellation of many other factors that you and I have to work on to change.

At the core of our fat storage are the myriad of hormones that precipitate this. What type of food we eat certainly affects these hormones (the worst being the carbohydrates), but sleep, stress, pain, fatigue, and lack of activity all impact. Losing weight truly is complicated, but it is an effort worth working on forever. It impacts on all of the common health issues; worse, it impacts on our quality of life and self-esteem.

Please, never ever give up. You need to find out what works for you. We are here to help and to guide.

Dr. Doug