Which diet should I choose to lose weight?

What a dietitian needs you to know about dieting

Carrie* is a 62 year old woman who came through my clinic door last week. “I just want to lose 5kg, I know I’ll feel better and that I need to do it,” she said. “Which diet is the best for me?”

You might have had the same thoughts as Carrie. I’m oft asked the same question. In fact, this question, and this question alone, has millions of dollars per year banking on people and researchers trying to find the answer.

There are so many diets offering calorie/kilojoule restriction of some kind. Which one works? How can I lose the weight and keep it off for good?

I need to be honest. The weight loss science equation is simple, and not so sexy.

Go on any of these diets, be it the latest intermittent fasting or ketogenic approach and you will lose weight in the short term. For most people, that’s guaranteed.

But what’s also guaranteed, is the fact this diet might be doing you more harm than good. And there is also the prospect you might put back on all the weight you lost and more. The science behind the scales tells us this kind of dieting might not work in the long-term because you are actually fighting against your body.

But what if I could show you how to work with your body instead of against it to achieve a long-term balanced weight?

What happens when the diet stops?

I asked Carrie what she’d tried in the past to lose weight. She sighed: “You name it, I’ve tried it – the 5:2, paleo, the ketogenic diet, even the cabbage soup diet. They all worked – I lost 10 kilos in just a few weeks on one of them! But I’ve gained it all back since. You see, I didn’t stick to them. But I know these diets have worked for me in the past.”

Perhaps that’s where Carrie has got it wrong. Almost every calorie/kilojoule restricted ‘diet’ fails its adherents. The diets fail to maintain weight loss “results” in the long-term. In fact, only twenty percent of people who “go on a diet” maintain that weight loss one year later. In five years 6me, seventy-seven percent of people will have gained that weight back, and possibly more.

Carrie beats herself up for being a failure at dieting. But, like a bad relationship, it’s not actually you – it’s the diet. The diet fails you, not the other way around.

What the science is telling us… 

Your current body weight is defended by a powerful biological system that has ensured the survival of the human race. You might want to lose weight but your body doesn’t. It can’t tell the difference between you wanting to fit into a smaller dress size for a wedding in one month’s time and actual life-threatening famine. Even if you’re at a higher weight, your body likes the natural balanced weight it’s found (that weight you tend to hover around these days).

Any threat to this balance by eating less than what your body needs to maintain that weight, sees your body fight back. It lowers your metabolism, that is, lowers how much energy your body burns each day so you’re able to run on less food, while increasing your hunger levels. This can lead to preoccupation with food and what scientists call “hedonistic pleasure seeking behaviours” with food and what we translate as craving chocolate. So it’s not a lack of willpower on your part that you crave more food ‘on the diet’ and that your weight loss journey plateaus. It’s your hormones, biologically driving it. And those hormones are powerful.

What if I were tell you, there is another way?

We need to remember, it’s not weight that it is the best marker of health. The weight loss industry is one fuelled by millions of dollars each year. But in what other industry, which fails its customers so many times over and over, would have you coming back to buy from them again?

As a dietitian, I’m here to support you in whichever approach you would like to take with your health. If weight loss is your goal, I can help support you to make sure it’s nutritionally safe. But ethically, it is my duty of care to let you know, that if you’d like to try restricted calorie dieting for weight loss, fast forward us to five years time, the evidence shows it most likely won’t have worked. But it’s not because of you.

If you’d like to learn about another way, one in which in five years time, will see you at your best wellbeing and balanced weight, I’d love to show you.

However, it takes a leap of faith. I asked Carrie: “Carrie – would you be open to experimenting with a different approach?”

What you can try instead

I’m passionate about the health benefits of following a Mediterranean Style eating pattern. Not only can it reduce your risk of developing heart disease, diabetes and help to lower blood cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose levels and manage insulin resistance, this style of eating is incredibly delicious, palatable, easy to follow and most importantly… sustainable.

At Rebound Health, we consider your health and lifestyle as a whole, not just a number on the scales or your calorie count for the day. Learning to reconnect and listen to your body’s natural hunger and fullness cues, reducing stress around food and adopting mindful eating approach is powerful. It’s empowering you to learn what your body needs for op6mum health and nutrition, and helps you to discover and fall in love with a way of eating that contributes to your genuine wellbeing.

Radical – we know. But we hope by reading this, it empowers you to not fall into the trap of following fad diets for weight loss, by helping you to know there is another way.

*Carrie is a fictional patient, based on a collection of patient presentations I see at Rebound Health daily.