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Dr. Charlotte Markey is aware that many of us are out to lose those last few pounds, but she has a different theory in mind: smart people don't diet.
What could this mean? Is this a tricky play on words? Of course smart people diet: they lose weight and stay healthy--how is that not smart?
In her book Smart People Don’t Diet: How the Latest Science Can Help You Lose Weight Permanently, you might find that the evidence is stacked against dieting. How could this be? Well, a lot of the diets that we are being sold simply don't work.
If you look at the evidence (and back at your own experiences), you might find that it's painfully obvious.
What does seem to work? Eating healthy, whole foods while giving yourself room to indulge every once in a while. Some studies even show that eating one sweet thing a day will help you lose more weight and keep it off--sign us up for that!
Here are six reasons smart people have stopped dieting--and why you should too.
1. Dieting can make you gain weight.
That's right: dieting can actually sometimes make you gain weight. In one study, researchers followed dieters for about two years. In short, it turns out that many of the participants weighed more at the end of the two years than when they started. "That’s a lot of work for no reward," Markey says.
2. Dieting uses valuable brain power.
It's common knowledge that all those calculations you have to do while dieting takes brain power, but recent research shows that it actually exhausts the brain. "In fact, dieting researchers who have examined the mental energy (often referred to as “bandwidth”) available to dieters versus nondieters have consistently found that people who diet are distracted by their diets and have a more difficult time learning new information, don’t problem-solve as well, and have lower self-control," Markey says. That's a little ironic, isn't it?
3. Dieting leads to "ironic" processing.
If someone tells you not to think of a white elephant, what are you going to think about? Try it. What I want you to do is try not to think about a white elephant at all. Don’t think about anything that has to do with elephants. OK, put all thoughts of that white elephant out of your mind for the next 10 seconds—clear your mind and count to 10. It's hard not to think about it, huh? That's pretty normal--now try applying this same exercise to chocolate or that donut in the conference room. It's ironic that trying not to think about something might actually lead you to obsess about it.
4. Dieting could keep you from eating "bad" foods that really aren't that bad for you.
"Evidence suggests that if we try to eliminate all “bad foods” from our diet we are likely to end up overeating them," says Markey. In the end, it's better to allow ourselves some room to indulge. In fact, one study found that if participants were allowed to eat one sweet thing a day, they tended to lose more weight and keep it off--it's a win-win!
5. Dieting leads to binging.
Research has found that when you limit yourself (you know, the whole "That's it! I'm giving up sugar, carbs, and junk food!"), you end up experiencing the "What the hell?" phenomenon. It's pretty simple. You see a cupcake during a bridal shower and you think, "What the hell? It's just one cupcake." Before you know it, you've had half a dozen cupcakes and you feel like you're going to diet from a sugar overload. "But the interim binging is likely to contribute to weight gain, guilt, and even disgust with ourselves," Markey explains. "It’d be better for our psyche—and our waistlines—to just take one dessert from the start."
6. Every time you fail your diet, someone is making a lot of money.
Think about it: if you keep buying a product even though you have to continually buy it again and again, you're just making that company money. If you only had to buy it once (and then never again), that wouldn't be much of a success. "One thing that scientists who study weight management know without question is that the diet industry is delighted when we fail on our diets—because we’re likely to try again and that just makes them more money!"
What do you think about this? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
Photo Copyright © 2015 oliver_symens_de/Flickr
