Here is a reprint of an IGIGI column. This one got the most comments (half of them nasty) and the most views!

May 6 th International No Diet Day! So Don’t Diet!

Diet used to mean what you ate; now it means to lose weight. It goes under different names including: Changes in eating habits, lifestyle choices etc. Whatever you call it it’s still dieting, and will have adverse reactions on your body. If you are doing without, then you are dieting.

10 Reasons why you shouldn’t diet.

1. Plain and simple. Dieting doesn’t work. And it ain’t your fault, you aren’t lazy, lacking in willpower or bored. 95-98% of diets fail because of other factors, namely genes, set-point, and the side effects of reduced calories on your body.

2. Your genes don’t like to diet. Genes make you fat as like they make other people tall, short and thin. The theory of “Setpoint” says your body picks a number and that’s it; Making it almost impossible to diet your way to your “proper” BMI.

3. Dieting leads to Yo-Yo dieting (Weight cycling) which is when you lose a lot of weight then regain it back more than 3 times. This is very different from being 10 pounds heavier in the fall. I’m talking about losing and gaining the same 30-100 pounds three times or more. It screws with your metabolism, your health and immune system.

4. Commercial Diets cost lots of money with little results. According to JAMA, The average amount of weight lost on Weight Watchers in a year is 6 pounds. Why waste all that time and money for something as insignificant as 6 pounds?

5. Dieting leads to poor self esteem. After a while your entire life’s worth depends on weight loss, you love your body when you lose, and hate it when you gain or maintain. You should love your body no matter what the weight.

6. Dieting can have the side effects of starvation and makes you fatter When you reduce the amount of calories, your body goes into starvation mode and all it wants to do is eat. The current obesity “epidemic” (which really isn’t as bad as it is made out) started only after the heavy push for dieting.

7. Dieting convolute healthy eating, food and causes binge eating. Due to dieting I have trouble eating salads. I used to love salads as a child but it I never want to eat it now because I associated it with dieting. Dieting also led to binge eating. Denying food makes it all the more tempting.

8. No diet of any kind works in the long run. Zero, zip, nada, nicht, cero, zitch, none. Nothing has been prove to work. The current “cure-all” is surgery which has dangerous side effects and no real long term studies.

9. The dangers of being fat are overblown. We kill ourselves over being fat, but really it isn’t as bad as it’s made out. Often statistics are either flawed or skewed. The best example is the 300,000 die of obesity statistic. That number came from amount of deaths from poor eating and lack of exercise not obesity.

10. Dieting steals your time. Dieting makes women focus on their appearance rather that more important things in life. Sure if you have a personal trainer, a chef, and no life you might be able to lose weight and keep it off. Instead of counting calories, carbs, grams, points I could having a nice meal with family and friends; instead of spending two hours at a gym blasting Britney Spears for two hours which could result in injuries (both hearing and otherwise), why not go on a low impact nature walk?