Quick-Fix Diets: Why They Don’t Work And What To Do Instead

I meet many people who have embarked on numerous diets over their lifetime, yet they’re still struggling with their weight- they’re sick and tired of dieting and are desperate to find a solution to tackle their excess weight once and for all. The problem is that many commercial diets offer quick-fix ‘solutions’ to help you get into that bikini for summer, that little black dress for Christmas or other annual social event. Many of us have come to rely on low calorie, quick-fix diets to reach a target weight because they are commonly seen as the most effective way to lose weight- but they’re not actually effective as they don’t provide a long-term solution, and can result in even more weight gain, long-term. If we embark on a low calorie diet, the body enters ‘starvation mode’, and will react accordingly to preserve energy. If we then stop the diet and go back to our old eating habits, not only is it easy to re-gain the weight, but after years of constant crash diets, we may gain back that weight, plus more, making us fatter than we were in the first place. This scenario is inevitable if a person focuses exclusively on a weight loss plan without addressing their overall relationship with food.

Explore Your Relationship With Food, Don’t Just Go On A Diet

Many people get so used to quick-fix diets that they can’t imagine any other way. We now live in such a fast- paced world that we expect quick results, and yet weight that is lost rapidly can be easily re-gained. It’s important to remember that our eating habits have been formed over a lifetime, and so they’re deeply ingrained into our psyche. If a habit is deeply ingrained, it takes time and effort to ‘deconstruct’ it. When we follow a specific weight loss plan, it’s easy to follow the diet’s rules and even get good weight loss results, but we don’t necessarily tackle our underlying eating habits and relationship with food, which means that as soon as we stop the diet we continue with our old ways. If we don’t address the habits, attitudes, beliefs and values that have kept us overweight for most of our lives, then we will always struggle to manage our weight long-term. By focusing on quick-fix diets to control our eating and lose weight, it’s very easy to be enticed by a final weight loss goal whilst overlooking our relationship with food and any problematic eating habits such as emotional eating and mindless eating.

To lose weight successfully and keep it off long-term, we have to do some work on ourselves- by this I mean look closely at our current eating habits and identify the key things about our eating that are letting us down. Our food choices and eating behaviour are heavily influenced by how we feel and think about food, how we use food, the food marketing environment and social occasions. For example, if a person believes that all vegetables are boring without trying ones they’ve never eaten before it’s likely that they won’t touch vegetables, despite all the health benefits they offer; or they might overestimate how much food they need, leading to oversized portions; they might have a tendency to reward themselves with food on a regular basis, or find it hard to resist special offers on food. If a person is a mindless or emotional eater and they go on quick-fix diets to control their eating, they’re going to experience a sense of deprivation and it’s likely they won’t stick to the diet for long. By becoming more self-aware and understanding why we might overeat we can improve our relationship with food and adopt mindful eating practises that we genuinely enjoy- weight loss can then be a positive by-product. Read my blog post: ‘How To Manage Emotional Eating’.

The Importance Of Being Patient

One of the main messages I communicate to clients is that they have to be patient. A good number of clients I meet who have done a lot of quick-fix diets approach me because they now realise that the quick-fix method doesn’t work long-term. They are sick of diets that only offer short-term results due to the fact that they are difficult to maintain- the plans are overly restrictive and therefore unenjoyable and anti-social, and generally require a lot of effort and willpower- they come to me once they’ve discovered that the only effective way is to aim for more gradual weight loss, which involves being patient. The advantage of more gradual weight loss is that you can eat in a more flexible way compared to how you have to eat on quick-fix diets- gradual weight loss programmes are therefore a lot more manageable, enjoyable and sustainable. With flexible eating you feel much less deprived, and I help clients to embrace more ‘middle-way’ eating, where you learn to move away from all-or-nothing thinking, ie being either ‘on’ or ‘off’ a diet or ‘good’ or ‘bad’ with your eating to more moderate, balanced eating. Most of us generally feel happier when we’re doing things in balance. Adopting a ‘middle way’ mindset means learning how to deconstruct those old, unhelpful habits, beliefs and thought patterns, and replace them with more helpful ones.

I help clients to acknowledge that identifying any unhelpful, unrealistic habits, behaviours and goals and replacing them with ones that are more realistic and in their own best interest is the key to long-term change. However, we can only embed new habits if we practise them enough- so consistency is key, and we have to be patient with ourselves. Building self-insight and self-understanding, creating your own personalised way of eating and not just simply going on a diet following someone else’s rules will help you to embark on more effective strategies that will be more sustainable.

Self-Awareness Is Power

When working with clients, my role is to invite them to explore their relationship with food and any self-limiting thoughts, beliefs and behaviours in relation to food, eating and weight loss. A person might be struggling with emotional eating, and therefore they need to be more self-compassionate, recognising that they have a problematic relationship with food, which they can work on improving through curiosity and a non-judgemental approach. Overeating isn’t about greed, it’s often about an individual struggling on some level. With awareness comes power. Creating a toolbox that enables you to stop having to rely on quick-fix diets can feel very empowering, and it will enable you to finally escape the vicious cycle of yo-yo dieting.

If you’d like to have a FREE chat about how I could help you, please give me a call (Emma Randall) on 07961 423120, or email me: info@mindfuleating.org.uk. Sessions are via Zoom or face-to-face.

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