Every January, we are bombarded with new diets, detox products, and promises of a "healthy" lifestyle, yet if all these quick fixes worked, the diet industry wouldn’t be a multi-billion-dollar business, right? It thrives on our desire for fast results, but what happens when they don’t last? We end up blaming ourselves for not sticking to the latest trend … and the cycle repeats.
Beliefs about the necessity of "Veganuary" or other New Year health trends are often driven by clever marketing and societal pressures. These messages create a sense of urgency to overhaul our lives, convincing us that this is the only way to reset and detox. But before jumping on the bandwagon, it’s important to assess why you feel the need to diet.
Are you driven by a desire for restriction due to past overeating?
Does the urge for a detox arise only in January or several times a year?
Is the desire for a detox rooted in health or a need to feel “clean”?
Are there deeper reasons, such as disordered eating or an eating disorder?
Reflecting on whether your decision to diet comes from a place of kindness and self-care—or from a strong dislike of your body and societal pressures to conform to certain beauty standards—can reveal much about your true motivations.
The State You’re in Matters
Where you start a diet matters as much as the diet itself. If you're entering it from a place of physical, mental, or emotional depletion, dieting can backfire. When your body is undernourished or lacking essential nutrients, restrictive eating can worsen feelings of fatigue, irritability, and stress, making it harder to stay committed. It can even trigger binge eating or other unhealthy coping mechanisms.
Starting from a depleted state places extra strain on your metabolism, hormones, and mental health. Rather than nourishing your body, the stress of restriction pushes it into survival mode, which makes it harder to lose weight—and, in some cases, can lead to long-term weight gain.
The Impact of Diets on Mental Health
Dieting doesn’t just affect your body; it can have a profound impact on mental health. The restrictive nature of many diets can trigger feelings of failure, guilt, and shame when adherence slips. These emotions can damage your relationship with food and body image, often leading to cycles of binge eating or emotional eating. For those dealing with anxiety or depression, dieting can exacerbate these issues, adding to stress and emotional distress.
Constantly striving for weight loss through extreme measures may also lead to:
Increased Anxiety: Worrying about calories, portion sizes, or “forbidden” foods.
Obsessive Thoughts: A constant focus on food, weight, and body image.
Social Isolation: Avoiding meals or social events due to fear of breaking the diet.
Reduced Self-Worth: Tying your personal value to weight loss success or failure.
Why Diets Often Fail
While many diets promise quick results, they often fail in the long run for the following reasons:
Restrictive Nature - Many diets exclude entire food groups or impose rigid restrictions, making them difficult to maintain in the long run. This often leads to feelings of deprivation and eventual abandonment of the plan.
Lack of Sustainability - The rapid weight loss promised by most diets is often temporary. Once you return to normal or habitual eating habits, the weight often returns—sometimes with extra pounds.
Ignoring Root Causes - Most diets only address the symptoms of poor eating habits, like excess weight, without addressing underlying issues, such as hormonal imbalances, emotional triggers, genetic factors, or disordered eating patterns.
Metabolic Adaptation - Drastic caloric restriction can slow your metabolism, making it harder for your body to burn calories efficiently. Over time, this adaptation leads to weight-loss plateaus and can even contribute to weight regain.
Weight-Centric Focus - Emphasising weight loss over overall health can promote an unhealthy relationship with food and body image, leading to cycles of guilt and frustration.
Functional Medicine - A Personalised Approach
Your body naturally regulates weight through complex systems that science is still working to fully understand. Key factors such as hunger and satiety signals play a big role in how your body responds to food. When faced with significant caloric restriction, the body perceives it as a survival threat and responds by adjusting hormone levels to slow metabolism and conserve energy. As a result, weight loss becomes more difficult over time.
Restrictive diets can further disrupt the hormones that regulate hunger and satiety, leading to constant feelings of hunger and increasing the risk of binge eating. Over time, these effects can raise your weight set point, making it even harder to sustain weight loss.
Instead of focusing on restrictive diets, it’s important to adopt a holistic, personalised approach that prioritises overall health and well-being rather than rapid weight loss. Everyone’s body responds to food differently, so the solution lies in creating a personalised, sustainable, and balanced way of eating. This approach should take into account how your body works, any existing health conditions, underlying factors specific to you, your unique life story, genetic makeup, and supporting lifestyle that works in harmony with your body’s natural regulatory systems.
By focusing on health as the ultimate goal, any desired weight loss becomes a natural side effect of a health-promoting diet, lifestyle, and mindset, rather than something reliant on willpower.
The Real Reason Diets Haven’t Worked for You
If diets haven’t worked for you in the past, it's not a matter of willpower or following the right plan. The real issue lies in choosing approaches that are unsustainable and don't align with your body’s needs.
Let’s start a conversation about creating a realistic and effective path to health and well-being - one that honours your body, mind, and long-term goals.
Get started today - book a call with Irina on our team to finally break the diet cycle once and for all and learn a healthier way of being.
