What You Don’t Know About Dieting

Most of us have dieted at some point in our lives. It may not have been extreme like the grapefruit diet or the cabbage soup diet (just, why?), but the vast majority of us have in some way restricted what or how we eat in order to lose weight.

In fact, the stats tell us that 92% of young Australian women, and 44% of our older women, have dieted at least once.

Why diets are so common is a question for another day, but the difference in the numbers above may shed some light – dieting has increasingly become an accepted, and expected, part of our culture.

This may not seem that surprising, especially when you take into the account lifestyle factors that affect a lot of us – we move less and eat more than we used to. It makes sense until you consider that those who lose weight by dieting almost always regain it. And then some.

Unfortunately, that’s not the only problem with dieting for weight loss. Psychologically, dieting can exacerbate problems with body image, depression and disordered eating. Physiologically, frequent weight loss dieting can increase illness, have a negative effect on life expectancy, reduce bone mass and increase cortisol production (that’s our stress hormone).

Not to mention that it can make us gain weight in the longer term. Dieting for weight loss is one of those situations where knowledge is power, and we can empower ourselves by understanding the facts rather than being guilted or shamed into believing that we should be doing something that actually may not be good for us at all.