Here is a recent Quote by a member of a forum that I frequent.

(The article posted below) “supports what some say, and I contend,
about dieting for MOST--not all --. And by dieting I mean a purposeful restriction of foods and amounts to match a target low intake and weight goal.

It certainly doesn't mean that reducing the number of calories won't result in some weight loss. It will. The point is that as a strategy it has not been shown to change permanent habits in most who try it. Worse, it distorts the process so that weight gain statistically follows.

You can argue until you're blue in the face that it will work, but if it thwarts the natural process for most, I call that a strategy meant for the few. And the stats show it. Not for those who make it- for those who don't. Which is most.”

My response to this quote, and to the Article I've posted below is:

Everything that has to do with eating or not eating food is a Diet.

Eating LESS than the body uses as energy is a “weight-loss diet”
Eating the SAME food that the body uses as energy is a “maintenance” diet.
Eating MORE food than the body uses as energy is a “weight-gain” diet.

Some Diets are more easily incorporated into the lifestyles of Some People than other Diets.
Labeling any type of eating (but especially a plan to eat less) "not a diet"
or a “non diet” is just a Semantic Game.

No matter what the "Diet"... "eating plan" .... "way-of-eating" .... "lifestyle",
it is difficult to lose weight, and even more difficult to maintain weight-loss.

I've been saying this here at DietHobby and other online places for quite some time,
and the article below supports this.  

This is my personal experience, and
I've been researching and writing about this for quite some time.
Some of the writings that support this principle can be found at the Links below:

Rethinking Thin: The New Science of Weight Loss---and the Myths and Realities of Dieting (2008) by Gina Kolata.

No Cure

Effort Shock

Science Has Failed

The Fat Trap

The Fat Trap - Follow-up

The Chubby Side of Normal

Set Point

Do Diets Work?

The only "conventional wisdom" that's really "changed"
in the 6 years since the writing of this 2007 article posted below,
is that recent studies have indicated that exercise does very little to help one lose weight;
that exercise might be helpful in maintaining weight-loss;
however, that exercise leads to better physical and mental health.

Dieting Does Not Work, UCLA Researchers Report
                    by Stuart Wolpert - April 03, 2007 - UCLA News

Will you lose weight and keep it off if you diet? No, probably not, UCLA researchers report in the April issue of American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association.

"You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."

Mann and her co-authors conducted the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of diet studies, analyzing 31 long-term studies.

"What happens to people on diets in the long run?" Mann asked. "Would they have been better off to not go on a diet at all? We decided to dig up and analyze every study that followed people on diets for two to five years. We concluded most of them would have been better off not going on the diet at all. Their weight would be pretty much the same, and their bodies would not suffer the wear and tear from losing weight and gaining it all back."

People on diets typically lose 5 to 10 percent of their starting weight in the first six months, the researchers found. However, at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they lost within four or five years, and the true number may well be significantly higher, they said.

"Although the findings reported give a bleak picture of the effectiveness of diets, there are reasons why the actual effectiveness of diets is even worse," Mann said.

Mann said that certain factors biased the diet studies to make them appear more effective than they really were. For one, many participants self-reported their weight by phone or mail rather than having their weight measured on a scale by an impartial source. Also, the studies have very low follow-up rates — eight of the studies had follow-up rates lower than 50 percent, and those who responded may not have been representative of the entire group, since people who gain back large amounts of weight are generally unlikely to show up for follow-up tests, Mann said.

"Several studies indicate that dieting is actually a consistent predictor of future weight gain," said Janet Tomiyama, a UCLA graduate student of psychology and co-author of the study. One study found that both men and women who participated in formal weight-loss programs gained significantly more weight over a two-year period than those who had not participated in a weight-loss program, she said.

Another study, which examined a variety of lifestyle factors and their relationship to changes in weight in more than 19,000 healthy older men over a four-year period, found that "one of the best predictors of weight gain over the four years was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started," Tomiyama said. In several studies, people in control groups who did not diet were not that much worse off — and in many cases were better off — than those who did diet, she said.

If dieting doesn't work, what does?

"Eating in moderation is a good idea for everybody, and so is regular exercise," Mann said. "That is not what we looked at in this study. Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss. Studies consistently find that people who reported the most exercise also had the most weight loss."

Diet studies of less than two years are too short to show whether dieters have regained the weight they lost, Mann said.

"Even when you follow dieters four years, they're still regaining weight," she said.

One study of dieting obese patients followed them for varying lengths of time. Among those who were followed for fewer than two years, 23 percent gained back more weight than they had lost, while of those who were followed for at least two years, 83 percent gained back more weight than they had lost, Mann said. One study found that 50 percent of dieters weighed more than 11 pounds over their starting weight five years after the diet, she said.

Evidence suggests that repeatedly losing and gaining weight is linked to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and altered immune function. Mann and Tomiyama recommend that more research be conducted on the health effects of losing and gaining weight, noting that scientists do not fully understand how such weight cycling leads to adverse health effects.

Mann notes that her mother has tried different diets, and has not succeeded in keeping the weight off. "My mother has been on diets and says what we are saying is obvious," she said.

While the researchers analyzed 31 dieting studies, they have not evaluated specific diets.
Medicare raised the issue of whether obesity is an illness, deleting the words "Obesity is not considered an illness" from its coverage regulations in 2004. The move may open the door for Medicare to consider funding treatments for obesity, Mann noted.

"Diets are not effective in treating obesity," said Mann. "We are recommending that Medicare should not fund weight-loss programs as a treatment for obesity. The benefits of dieting are too small and the potential harm is too large for dieting to be recommended as a safe, effective treatment for obesity."

From 1980 to 2000, the percentage of Americans who were obese more than doubled, from 15 percent to 31 percent of the population, Mann noted.

A social psychologist, Mann, taught a UCLA graduate seminar on the psychology of eating four years ago. She and her students continued the research when the course ended. Mann's co-authors are Erika Westling, Ann-Marie Lew, Barbra Samuels and Jason Chatman.

"We asked what evidence is there that dieting works in the long term, and found that the evidence shows the opposite" Tomiyama said.

The research was partially supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

In future research, Mann is interested in studying whether a combination of diet and exercise is more effective than exercise alone.

UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 37,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer more than 300 degree programs and majors. UCLA is a national and international leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care, cultural, continuing education and athletic programs. Four alumni and five faculty have been awarded the Nobel Prize.

Before drawing a conclusion that Diets are negative because they cause Weight-Gain,
it is important to remember that there is a Difference between Causation and Correlation.
See Linked article.

Just because Fat People and Dieting are Associated,
doesn’t mean that Dieting Causes People to be fat.

As much as we might like the idea of trusting  the Body to tell us when and how to eat, sometimes our Body’s Hunger is a Lie.

Here are a couple of articles about the Science of Willpower, which discuss some of the reasons why the Body’s wisdom can’t always be trusted.

The Ghrelin Gremlin 
           by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D.
                          Published on June 22, 2010 in Psychology Today

One of the most popular ideas in weight loss right now is:

 "trust your body's wisdom."
The body knows what it wants. The body never lies.
If you listen to signals like hunger and satiety, your body will never steer you wrong.

This is a lovely sentiment, and it's true that the body is a great source of wisdom.
Until it's not.

A new study presented at the annual meeting of the Endocrine Society shows how the brain can be tricked by the body into overeating and choosing fattening foods over healthier choices. [1]

The study set-up was simple enough: bring in hungry participants and ask them to choose between high-calorie, high-fat foods (e.g. pizza, cake, chocolate) and less fattening foods (e.g. salad, vegetables, and lean protein). Not surprisingly, hungry participants preferred the less healthy choices. Their bodies craved energy. The researchers then had participants makes similar choices, but 90 minutes after eating a meal. They weren't as hungry, and they made healthier choices. They "listened" to their bodies and choose a more appropriate snack, given their fullness.

But the researchers didn't stop there. They were interested in whether they could mimic the effects of fasting by manipulating participants' level of a hormone called "ghrelin." Ghrelin stimulates appetite and plays a big role in the body's signals of hunger and cravings. It is typically regulated by things like how recently you ate your last meal and blood sugar level, making it a good signal of the need to eat. But it can also be influenced by many other things, including stress and sleep. This means that as much as you'd like to trust the body, the signal of hunger can be a lie.

Back to the lab: On one visit, participants who had recently eaten a full meal were injected with ghrelin. And this time, the participants behaved as if they were starving. They found the higher-fat, higher-calorie foods more appealing and were more likely to choose them--even though the body was actually quite satiated.

This injection was just a quick-and-dirty stand in for all the things that can push ghrelin levels up in the real world. If you're sleep deprived, your body is pumping out more ghrelin to get you to eat. [2]

It's a poor substitute for sleep, but high-fat, high-sugar foods are a source of the energy you desperately need. The same is true for stress. And research shows that high-sugar foods  - especially drinks, including sodas - artificially boosts ghrelin levels. [3]

This is one likely reason that soda and fruit juice consumption are both associated with obesity. The drinks themselves may not be a diet-breaker, but if you sip them all day, your body starts to lie to you. When it doesn’t, you'll be hungrier and more attracted to less healthy foods.

The bottom line: listening to your body needs to be balanced with mindful self-control. Know that not every craving is a message of wisdom from your stomach. Sometimes it's just a trick.

Studies cited:
1. The Endocrine Society (2010, June 20). Stomach hormone ghrelin increases desire for high-calorie foods. Presented by T. Goldstone.
2. Spiegel K, Tasali E, Penev P, Van Cauter E. Brief communication: Sleep curtailment in healthy young men is associated with decreased leptin levels, elevated ghrelin levels, and increased hunger and appetite. Ann Intern Med. 2004 Dec 7;141(11):846-50.
3. Lindqvist A, Baelemans A, Erlanson-Albertsson C. Effects of sucrose, glucose and fructose on peripheral and central appetite signals. Regul Pept. 2008 Oct 9;150(1-3):26-32.
            www . psychologytoday.com

The Diabolic Secret Powers of Junk Food
               by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D 
                            Published on September 18, 2009 in Psychology Today

It seems too clever, too diabolic to be true. A recent study shows that foods high in saturated fat -- ice cream, cheese, red meat -- cause your brain to secrete chemicals that tell the body to ignore biological signals of fullness (like leptin and insulin). The result: you don't "feel" full, and you keep eating. It's as if junk food had been shaped by the forces of evolution, learning to fool humans into ever-increasing consumption. And it explains why we seem to have an endless appetite for some foods, like pizza and a pint of Ben and Jerry's.

Even more mind-blowing: the effect lasts three days. So an indulgent meal can make you more likely to keep indulging, undermining any resolution to get back on track with healthier choices. This dirty trick is specific to saturated fats; foods low in saturated fats but high in healthier fats do not show the effect.

This study nicely highlights some of the most important influences on willpower. For example, we tend to think that our choices are independent, and that choosing to eat dessert or smoke a cigarette tonight has nothing to do with whether we indulge tomorrow. In fact, our behavior is far less variable than we think, and each choice (to resist or give in) strengthens the likelihood of choosing to do the same again. This study illuminates one biological mechanism that may contribute to this phenomenon, at least when it comes to diet.

Most people also have a hard time distinguishing between the promise of reward and actual satisfaction. As this study shows, many foods high in sugar or fats activate areas of the brain that promise satisfaction, but do not trigger the biological process of satiety. Other temptations -- from reality TV to most addictive drugs -- follow a similar pattern, increasing craving but not leading to lasting satisfaction. So we keep chasing the reward, ignoring the fact that in the long run, we aren't really satisfied and only want more.

Finally, it highlights the potentially discouraging fact that our behavior is influenced by forces we aren't consciously aware of. Like studies showing that the size and color of your plate influences how much you eat, and the smell of a store influences how much you spend, this study reminds us that we are vulnerable to unconscious processes.

However, awareness is a powerful antidote to all of these challenges. If you know that eating certain foods is going to fool your appetite, you can prepare yourself to make more conscious choices. If you start paying attention to the indulgences that are most satisfying, you can reward yourself with them. And if you know that your choices today are likely to influence your choices tomorrow, you will be less likely to tell yourself, "Today I indulge, tomorrow will be different."

Study citation: Benoit SC, Kemp CJ, Elias CF, et al. (2009) Palmitic acid mediates hypothalamic insulin resistance by altering PKC-θ subcellular localization in rodents. The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 119(9), 2577-89.       
                www . psychologytoday.com

Diets and dieting is often an emotionally charged topic. Everyone has an opinion, and most people are interested in sharing theirs.  Even "experts" have different perspectives and many of them are quite evangelistic about their own beliefs on the subject.

There is now a rather popular viewpoint fostered by some Therapists and Nutritional experts who say that "Diets don't work";  that "Diet head is a bad thing"; and that "Dieting is one of the primary causes of eating disorders".  

Do Diets Work?

My own position is that If a person eats food, and that person is alive, that person is on a diet that works. The frequency of eating, the amount eaten, and the micronutrients of the food eaten are all just factors of various diets. For more about those factors, read my articles: 

The Essence of Diets Part One, and

The Essence of Diets Part Two.

What is "Diet head" and is it a bad thing?     

The basic essence of the term, diet head simply involves thinking about what and how one is eating.  I, personally, see this as a very positive thing, and have chosen to make Dieting one of my Hobbies. For more about that perspective read my article:

"Diet head" is a vague and negative term coined by "experts" who hate the concept of restricting eating.  When I Googled it, I couldn't find it in any dictionary, even the current "slang" ones.

 
Does Dieting cause eating disorders?

That's an enormous question, because first one would have to agree with current definitions of exactly what an  "eating disorder" is, and I don't.  Next, since everyone is on a diet (because everyone alive eats food sometimes), unless everyone has an eating disorder Dieting couldn't cause it. 

That subject of "eating disorders" and what causes them, is far too broad for me to cover here, and I will be addressing it in future articles. 

So, starting with the Basic premise of Diet, opinions are divided from that point on.  Each of us moves and breathes and thinks and behaves independently.  I see the subject of How and What one eats, as one of the most personal issues in life. 

In this DietHobby website, I talk about that issue and I share about how it relates to me personally. One primary belief that I share here, is that It's not a one-size-fits-all world; that there is no one "right" way for everyone, and that finding a way of eating that is "right" for one is part of one's individual life journey which can be both valuable and entertaining. 

 

I read a lot about various Diet Plans, and I've spent a lot of time experimenting with them. I am not a fan of the Intutitive Eating Diet (and it is a Diet, although proponents like to label it a "non-diet"). 

My research and personal experience with it  has proven to me that "Intutive Eating" is an absolute disaster as a weight-loss plan for almost every person who struggles with obesity.  In my opinion, even "Faith Healing" has a better track record.

People who embrace the Intuitive Eating concepts sometimes develop Peace of Mind about their eating...but that usually lasts only until they realize that, not only are they NOT losing weight... they are Actually becoming fatter.

However, adding some simple guidelines to that concept can help stop the Intuitive Eating runaway train to Fat City.

I think that embracing the No S Diet plan is a useful strategy that can be helpful for people who have bought into, and found themselves trapped inside, the Intuitive Eating fantasy mindset.

Here's a very insightful quote by a long-time member of the "No S" forum:

When a thin person says she eats as much as she wants, it is a different "as much" as the typical overweight person.

Most thin people have a different definition of what full or stuffed is. Most of them hate the feeling of being stuffed. And most of them will routinely wait a long time to have a meal, if necessary. If they have to wait longer for dinner one day, they just get hungrier and wait. They will leave even food they love on their plate when they are full.

If eating as much as you want routinely means eating when you are hungry and beyond full or slightly less than full, you will not lose weight.

In the meantime, when you are intermittently reinforcing the habit of overeating, eating just because you have an urge that has nothing to do with hunger, responding to environmental cues, etc., you are making that habit stronger and stretching out the time it takes to help establish and solidify the habit of allowing yourself to get hungry several times a day by eating moderate amounts and then waiting an appropriate amount of time.

I spent years looking at why I ate. It wasn't until the No S Diet that I realized that it didn't matter. The best way to cut the cord between multiple reasons to eat and eating was to surrender to the one-plate 3-meal structure.  I won't ever be able to remove all the reasons I would like to eat.  On N (normal) days, most N days, they are irrelevant.  The problems don't go away.  The random eating has.

I eat my meals, some light, some heavier.  I get hungry, I satisfy the hunger.

It is ten times easier (but not easy at the start) than anything else I've done and that includes several years wasted trying to just read my body's signals. It is too easy to lie to yourself or to just not be sensitive enough. Besides, on that system, I was routinely getting hungry even fewer times per day because I would overeat the wrong foods all the time. Do you think you can get used to that?

Then again all the experimentation did finally make me see the futility of the other methods for me.
 

The Fantasy of  Intuitive Eating  is alluring.

"Eat when you're hungry."
"Eat what you like."
"Stop when you're full".

However, for most people, these instructions are totally ineffective.
These concepts of Intuitive Eating involve letting one's BODY tell one how much to eat.

While a "slightly" obese person can have a similiar MENTAL state to a morbidly obese person, the BODY of a person who has spent a few years a bit over the BMI Obesity Border, is far, far different from the BODY of a person who has spent much of their lifetime far over that border.

New HABITS can be learned, and one can gain a new MINDSET, however, the PRIMARY PROBLEM with INTUITIVE EATING ... for those who've spent lots of time  far into the weight range of Obesity or are now "Reduced Obese"
...is the difference in their BODY's Physical Responses due to their condition, or former condition.

The body responds and changes as a result of Increased weight, and many of those inner changes are not eliminated by weight-loss, or evidently....(based on the experience of myself and others)... by maintaining that weight-loss for 5 to 10 years.

One Example of this is that Fat cells are not simple storage deposits, but each one actively relates to the body continually.

Anyone who has ever been morbidly Obese, has far, far more fat cells than someone who has never been less than 50 lbs overweight, and with weight loss, fat cells shrink, but NEVER disappear.

Body changes were addressed in the research of Dr. Rudolph Leibel, M.D. who assessed the reasons for the frequent regaining of weight by reduced-obese patients. Results of that research were:

"The mean individual energy requirement of reduced-obese subjects was less than that for the control (normal-weight) subjects, despite the fact that they still weighed 60% more than the controls.

In order to maintain a reduced weight, some reduced-obese or even partially reduced patients must restrict their food intake to approximately 25% less than that anticipated on the basis of metabolic body size."

Intuitive Eating is a MENTAL process of teaching oneself to rely on the BODY's NATURAL hunger and appetites.

However, the NATURAL BODY RESPONSE of a reduced obese person provides hunger and appetite cues that are intended to return that person to their former weight.
 My position is that ....perhaps... Intuitive Eating principles MIGHT work for those who have spent a brief period of their life in the BMI "overweight" category, or even slightly over the BMI "obesity" category, but as a weight-loss, or maintenance of weight-loss tool, Intuitive Eating principles are totally ineffective for those who have spent long periods of time well into the BMI category of "Obesity".

How do I explain the Examples used by Intuitive Eating Guru Authors? My personal opinion based on my personal research is that most of those Examples are a result of wishful thinking, wild exaggeration and outright untruthfulness.