Why Diets Sometimes Fail

There is a lot of article space given over to the many reasons why this or that diet is great for you and will enable you to lose so many pounds in weight if you choose to go on the latest or most heavily publicized of them.

You only have to look at the accolades poured over some well advertised commercial diets. Like for instance how easy it is to afford the "low" cost of Nutrisystem to lose weight or how this or that celebrity lost so many pounds on the Medifast diet.

But very little space is given over to why so many diets actually fail and the reasons for that failure.

So this article does exactly that and delves into the whys and wherefores of why diets sometimes fail and the reasons for this.

Understanding Why Your Diet Failed

diet failureTo understand why a particular diet may fail, you first have to look at why diets are supposed to work in the first place. The whole idea behind dieting is to restrict a person's intake of calories in the first instance.

Then regulating the volume or bulk of types of foods that are eaten by bringing into balance the ratios between proteins, carbohydrates, fats and dietary fibre.

Different diets tend to concentrate on providing a person with different ratios between those main four aspects of their diet.

However, the fundamental underlying precept is to maintain a low enough calorie count so that he body will not be able to store excess calories as fat, but instead burn the calories it consumes through normal everyday activities without needing to resort to strenuous exercise programs.

So now that we know that, it seems straight forward enough. So why should any of the many diets that are in existence fail to cause you to lose any weight?

The Simple Diet Success Answer

The answer is often more simple than we care to know. It really is as simple as this: If you didn't lose weight because you didn't get the most from your diet, then you consumed more calories than the it allowed for. Which, basically means you must have cheated!

Well you need patience to lose weight and you need to stick to your diet. This is a fundamental truth of all diets.

If you don't lose any weight then the simple answer is that you are eating more calories (that generally means consuming more sugar) than your body burns. OK, you may say, "But my body can't be burning enough calories then," and follow that with a bunch of lame excuses that no one really believes.

The problem is, even if you are sitting still all day, your body is still burning calories to make your heart beat, your digestive system work and all the other things your body needs to do.

However, if you are eating foods and drinking drinks that contain a lot of added sugars, especially fructose (as with high fructose corn syrup, which is is so many processed foods), your body is simply not using up the sugar and instead, turning it to fat to be stored. This problem is essentially the root of the modern day obesity problem the world is now facing.

A calorie controlled diet that works factors all those things in and comes up with a figure that is the minimum number of calories your body needs in order to function plus some for general movement throughout the day.

These diets are designed to limit your sugar (calorie) intake to allow your body to burn more than it is consuming. So if you had stuck rigidly to the diet and not exceeded your fixed daily calorie intake count and literally gained the most from your diet, then you must have lost weight.

Are You Still Not Losing Weight?

If you don't lose weight, then you must be eating more than the diet allows for and you really need to read up more on why diets fail. It generally means you are cheating, pure and simple!

No excuses. You thought no one was looking and you sneaked in a few cookies with your coffee, or you ate a packet of potato chips or other high calorie snack, or you drank some sugar laden soda!

When you cheat on a diet, believing no one will know about it, you are literally cheating no one but yourself, of course.

No one really cares if your diet failed or succeeded except you. So don't you think you owe it to yourself to stick with a diet if you really mean to lose weight.

And if you are only half hearted about it, then don't expect anything to work for you, if you're not prepared to work for yourself!

The short answer is to make up your mind you are going to start working for yourself with all you've got. 100% of it. And then start doing it!