Restrictive Diets: Why They Are Doomed to Fail Long-Term

With all the diets advertised and promoted, it is hard to determine which ones actually work and which aren’t worth your effort.

Hundreds of diet plans compete for your consideration and dollars, each with evidence that you can lose weight by following a specific plan. The majority of diets can and do promote weight loss short-term, but few support lasting weight loss.

The experts associated with the plethora of diets on the market each have a different opinion and many suggest restricting a specific macronutrient – carbohydrates, fats and proteins – or severely limiting calories, unwittingly setting you up for failure in the long term.

The list of restrictive diets is seemingly never ending, leaving many to wonder which, if any of them, leads to fat loss.

Just about any diet will promote weight loss, some very rapidly. The problem is few encourage the eating pattern and lifestyle changes necessary for you to successfully manage your weight long-term.

When you complete your diet and begin to revisit your old eating habits, you generally gain back all the weight you lost and more.

In fact, three research studies published in the March 2009 edition of The Journal of Nutrition say that this restriction/binge pattern of consumption may result in “food addiction.”

Nicole M. Avena, Ph.D., a researcher who studies the parallels between addiction to food and drugs of abuse, and her colleagues found that when they restricted the diets of rats followed by open access to sugar, rats binged on the sugar.

Conversely, rats that had continual access to the sugar rarely exhibited binge eating patterns. Similar findings have been reported when fat is used instead of a sweet substance like sugar, which suggests the sweetness is not the cause of binge eating behaviors.

There are many similarities between food and drug addiction cravings in humans according to Marcia Pelchat, Ph.D., a scientist who researches food cravings and responses to foods.

In the second study, Pelchat discovered that the way food is consumed, rather than its taste or nutritional value is the likely cause of addictive patterns of eating, which result in weight gain.

In the final study, Pennsylvania State University researchers reported that specific foods – those rich in fat and sugar – when consumed in a restriction binge eating pattern, are capable of promoting neuronal changes that result in food addiction.

A good eating plan will not only promote weight loss, but sustain it for the long-term.

Shawn Talbott, Ph.D., a nutritional biochemist and author of The Cortisol Connection Diet, suggests a simple approach he calls “The Helping Hand.”

Instead of restricting macronutrients or calories, Talbott suggests controlling portion size – based on the size of your hand – and eating smaller, more frequent meals with a balanced quantity of macronutrients.

Talbott says one reason the “Helping Hand” approach works is because it “helps with both fat-burning and with appetite control, because you’re eating small/frequent meals which keeps glucose levels from surging too high or dropping too low throughout the day.”

Another reason why restrictive diets rarely end in long-term weight loss is they create stress – known to promote weight gain.

According to Talbott, counting calories is difficult and stressful “and we know that people who get the most stressed about certain foods making them fat (high levels of dietary restraint) are also those with higher cortisol, more belly fat, and [who have] a harder time losing weight and keeping it off.”


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