by Reid Aune

Created on: August 28, 2008

If you want to lose weight, DO NO DIET! Research shows that diets have a failure rate of approximately 98%; they simply do not work for a variety of reasons.

One main reason diets fail are because they are usually designed, and believed by dieters to be, temporary. Some diets may actually help people to temporarily lose weight by severely restricting calories or forcing their followers to only consume low energy foods. However, once the target time or weight is attained, most go back to their original eating habits and regain the weight they lost because the body has become starved of energy. In such a situation it is common for dieters to gain more weight then they have originally lost as a body put in such a starved state will become more efficient at storing energy from food.

Though many could benefit from lowering their calorie intake, most diets restrict calories too severely. When this happens to the human body it increases its ability to store energy, or in other words, the metabolism is lowered. At this point less food is required to run the body: meaning it is easier to gain weight. The less food the body is given, the lower the metabolism becomes. Ironically, dieting often creates an environment where it is easier to gain weight.

Dieting can also cause the dieter to feel a sense of depravity as well as harming one's self-confidence if goals are not met, or for even feeling the need to diet in the first place.
This can lead to cheating on the diet and can cause higher stress levels in general. Since diets are usually undertaken to improve quality of life and health, stress is definitely counter-productive. Especially since increased levels of stress makes us unhappy and has been proven to cause increases in fat storage.

Therefore, the best ways to lower your weight, or to maintain a healthy one, requires us to follow a healthy lifestyle. The essential elements of a healthy lifestyle are sufficient exercise and sleep, doing things you enjoy on a regular basis, and finally eating healthily: for life. Eating right is not a short term effort; it must be done for the rest of your life for it to be effective. But it does not need to be as stressful and restrictive many of us make it by following many of today's diets.

So if you want to be healthy in body and mind avoid dieting. Instead work towards creating a healthy lifestyle in general. Of course you need to be sensible about what you eat, but avoid taking your diet to extremes. Balance, in all aspects of your life, is the most important thing you can do for your health.

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