Another Weight Loss Diet New Year’s Resolution: Another Upcoming Disappointment

Do you have your 2014 New Year’s Resolution figured out yet? Are you going start ANOTHER diet with the hope to lose weight, lose fat, and get in shape?

How many years now have you had this as your New Year’s Resolution? How have those resolutions ended? Did you lose any weight, burn any fat, get in better shape?

Many of you may have had some early success and lost a pound or 3 in January. But by the end of February, those pounds were back, and by the end of the year, they had invited some friends to stay over!

“But this year is going to be different!”

Didn’t you say that last year? And the year before that?

What you have to understand is that your failed diets aren’t your fault. Diets Don’t Work. You know it. I know it. Science has proven it.

Check out the results from one diet studied by UCLA:

“One study of dieting obese patients followed them for varying lengths of time. Among those who were followed for fewer than two years, 23 percent gained back more weight than they had lost, while of those who were followed for at least two years, 83 percent gained back more weight than they had lost, Mann said. One study found that 50 percent of dieters weighed more than 11 pounds over their starting weight five years after the diet, she said.”

They summarized the study by saying people are better off not even bothering to diet in the first place. Check out this one quote from the article: “”one of the best predictors of weight gain over the four years was having lost weight on a diet at some point during the years before the study started,” Basically, their research found that people who diet generally gain more than people who don’t diet over a 4 year period!

A couple years back, I was in a situation similar to most 40 year women my age. I was active, lean and healthy in my university days, but then I graduated and life happened. I wasn’t playing sports any more. I wasn’t going to the gym as much. I was busy with work and family…

Year after year, I gained a pound or 2 or 5. It was a slow transition and I barely noticed it (or at least refused to acknowledge it). Same with my increasing levels of lethargy and fatigue. Eventually though, enough was enough, and like so many people I tried a few different diets. I tried “watching what I eat” first. That had NO EFFECT at all.

Then I tried Weight Watchers, but I was terrible at keeping track of my points and that plan barely lasted a week.

So my husband and I went on the Atkins Diet. My husband LOVED that diet! All he ate was bacon. He was in heaven. And he lost a lot of weight fast. I wasn’t quite as impressed. I was bloated all the time and low on energy. I was happy though because I did lose some weight. But I couldn’t live on a diet like that and my husband was worried about his high cholesterol, so after a few weeks we went back to the “watching what we eat” diet.

I think he kept the weight off for close to 3 months, but my weight came back in about 6 weeks. And as the UCLA study reported, a year later we were both heavier than our starting weights.