Nutrition How many "fad" diets did you try before you found what worked?

[LukeV]

Have you ever been able to track down the source for that statistic of 95% failure rate?

This is from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council clinical guidelines on the management of obesity:

Weight regain is common after weight loss achieved by lifestyle interventions, with studies (Cooper et al. 2010; Dansinger et al. 2007; Martin et al. 2008) finding: weight lost is usually regained by 5 years of follow-up; and weight regain to pre-intervention weight occurs regardless of whether the participant has overweight or class I, II or III obesity, and in participants with normal blood sugar, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

The 95% statistic may be in one of those studies.

 

[coachnathanwhite]

I've had a lot of success with practicing the Warrior Diet and alternate day fasting to re-establish and maintain a healthy body comp.

My favorite method is alternate day fasting where I will eat 2000 to 2,500 calories (water, whole foods, no junk, no booze) followed by a day of fasting (water, broth, coffee, tea).

I will do this for several weeks until I am where I should be, which is typically around 185 lbs / 10% BF. Regardless of where I am at I will usually always have at least 1 day per week where I fast for 24-36 hours.

 

[silveraw]

This is from the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council clinical guidelines on the management of obesity:

Weight regain is common after weight loss achieved by lifestyle interventions, with studies (Cooper et al. 2010; Dansinger et al. 2007; Martin et al. 2008) finding: weight lost is usually regained by 5 years of follow-up; and weight regain to pre-intervention weight occurs regardless of whether the participant has overweight or class I, II or III obesity, and in participants with normal blood sugar, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.

The 95% statistic may be in one of those studies.

Thanks! I’ll dig through that this weekend!

 

[hahillbilly]

I find it interesting that "diet" has became synonymous with "weight-loss". Diet can also be defined as what we eat. I am also not sure that eating in a manor that regulates weight, is also the way that leads to the healthiest individual. Low-Carb is a good way for many people to loose weight, both through loss of water weight and appetite suppression. That is only my opinion, based on my personal experience , and from what I have seen and read.

But

The longest living, skinniest groups of people on earth eat a ton of carbs.

I have always been active, even though I didn't "exercise" or "train" until a few years ago. Until I reached middle age, I never had any weight issues. I wore the same size jeans from 16 until 36, and pretty well ate anything I wanted. Since then I have struggled. I have lost weight on several different types of low carb, but I really struggle with cheating, and then going nuts. Even with large amounts of training and a very busy job, I still run 20-30lbs more fat then I would like. I like to eat.

I am now almost 55, and I have recently started the warrior diet, and so far so good. I am not sure if something that has probably been around for a couple 100 thousand years (IF) can be called a "fad", but....

 

[LukeV]

The longest living, skinniest groups of people on earth eat a ton of carbs.

It's true that almost all human populations eat what a paleo proponent would describe as a 'high carb' diet and that those populations that don't have particular environmental factors that limit the availability of carbohydrates (i.e. they don't purposefully exclude them from their diets). Both high carb and low carb provide examples of healthy populations although we can argue all day over what high, low and healthy mean. My experience (from over 70 fad diets) is that people who want to reduce their weight should reduce fat or reduce carbs and probably reduce fat and carbs. I've got effective results from all three approaches. However, the research tells us that almost everyone puts back on the weight that they lose and my own view (not research based) is that this is because they go back to doing what made them overweight in the first place. So if you got fat because you ate too much, including too much fat or too many carbs, you will get fat again once you revert back to eating too much. And almost everyone does! They go back to doing what they used to do. As you say "diet has become synonymous with weight loss" but a common-sense conclusion from the data is that diet is synonymous with weight gain, weight loss and weight maintenance. The diet that you use to lose weight is the diet that you should stay on to achieve weight maintenance and avoid weight gain. Giving up hamburgers and pizza to lose 10 kg then eating hamburgers and pizza again results in ...

 

[North Coast Miller]

Without exercise no diet works well.

If you do a search of "humans evolved to need exercise" you get hits from everything from heart health to brain function to childhood development. Its an essential macro in ALL successful diet plans.