by Jason Medina

Created on: March 22, 2008

Diets are very hard to follow for any length of time. The reason for this is because dieting goes against the very basic human desire to maximize pleasure and satisfaction. It's normal for a human being to want to eat good food, and it's normal for a human being to want to eat until they are satisfied. And diets oppose those very basic human needs. That's why most people don't last too long on a diet, no matter what type of diet they are on. After a period of time in which you sacrifice and eschew your favorite foods in your preferred quantities, your natural "pleasure" urge kicks in and you say "forget this"! As a result, most diets just don't work!

Sure, they work for a while. They work as long as you can deny your urges to eat the foods that you want in the quantities that you want. But, sooner or later, most people start to slacken the reigns on their diet. They eat a little more, they splurge a little more, and pretty soon the number on the scale starts to creep back up towards the number that prompted you to start a diet in the first place. It all boils down to satisfaction and the pleasure/pain principle. The longer you restrict your food choices and avoid the foods that make you feel happy and satisfied, the greater your pain. The urge to eat and be happy starts to build, and eventually you give in to your gluttonous desires. The urge to eat "real food" in real quantities becomes too strong and you give in. That's normal human nature: to maximize pleasure and to minimize pain!

And that's why diets just don't work in the long-term. Diets cause a disruption of the pleasure/pain principle, and diets cause a great deal of frustration and angst in terms of not being able to feed your body the food that you desire and covet. And that's where a person has to make a decision. Do they want to live the rest of their life feeling unsatisfied, frustrated, and hungry? Is it worth the struggle to deny yourself the foods that you covet just so you can achieve a certain number on a scale? Are you willing to give up your favorite foods in your preferred quantities for the rest of your life in exchange for a flat stomach? That's the equation that has to be worked out for a person who is contemplating the pros and cons of being on a diet. For a diet to be successful, it has to be something that you can live with for the majority of your days.

But the trick is to find some sort of a balance between the pleasure/pain equation. Most diets disrupt that equation too much, thereby rendering the majority of diets ineffectual and unsustainable!

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