The Common Sense Diet

The diet industry in the United States is a $40 billion-a-year business. It preys on consumers, using deceptive advertising and promoting diets that supposedly allow you to eat whatever you want. This industry also presents the dieting consumer with an unreal set of expectations backed by deceptive “results” as portrayed in television, commercial, and print ads. These companies fail to mention that the long-term results of a majority of dieters on their program are dismal at best. Numbers vary, but most experts agree that between 60–80 percent of dieters end up regaining a large portion of their lost weight after they end their diet.

Traditionally, diet companies only track participant results to the six-month post-diet mark (which is probably intentional, as most customers begin to experience weight regain at the one-year mark). Why don’t diets work? I believe this is due to a number of factors:

• Cookie-Cutter Diets
  No two people are alike, and therefore, no two people will respond exactly the same way to a diet. But most diet companies sell everyone the same diet, even when they claim that their diets are personalized. These programs are flawed from the very start.
• Fad and Yo-Yo Dieting
  These two are closely related. Yo-yo dieters are usually yo-yoing between different fad diets, looking for a magic diet that is easy and allows them to eat whatever they wish.
• Dieting Versus Lifestyle Change
  Upon reaching their goal, people generally go back (albeit slowly) to the same eating habits that caused them to need to diet in the first place. This is probably something that diet companies do not address for a reason … after all, when you regain the weight, you’ll need to pay for another diet program, right? Some diet plans have a “maintenance” phase, though it is usually lacking a realistic approach.

So where does that leave the average consumer looking to lose weight? Lost, more often than not, and dealing with a USDA Food Pyramid that is in serious need of an update. In my opinion, the best way to eat is to flip the food pyramid on its head and prioritize foods in reverse order (not counting the tip, which is fats, oils, and sweets).