This is the second in a week-long series on dieting and weight loss for 2020. Next up: How to eat like you’re in the Mediterranean, in Toronto

Diets are so last year.

That’s the message a lot of registered dietitians are hoping to get out there, in hopes of convincing people not to embark on a new diet — any new diet — as a New Year’s resolution. Why not? Because nutrition experts are trying to encourage people to give “lifestyle management” a shot instead.

“The idea of following a diet is something we’ve been walking away from for a very long time,” explains Joanne Lewis, director of healthcare provider education and engagement at Diabetes Canada. “In fact, we try very hard not to use the word ‘diet’ anymore, because changing behaviour is not something that comes easily to people in general, since humans adopt their eating habits over time. It’s not something we can just flip a switch and easily change.”

That’s one reason most diets tend to fail the vast majority of people. One registered dietitian recently told me the average time people stick to a diet is about 30 days — and three months is a real success story. It might be thrilling to radically change-up your diet and feel like you’re really making a difference — at first. However, big changes don’t tend to survive the first high-stress period at work, or the first family vacation.

Worse, perhaps, is the fact that diets are a one-size-fits-all solution, as opposed to a plan for change based on an individual’s tastes, needs and limitations (be they time or money). At its best, lifestyle management begins with a solid assessment of your actual lived life to see what can be changed and what cannot. When done in a clinical setting to help a person dealing with, say, an obesity-related illness, it’s called a “lifestyle intervention,” meaning the patient has outside help, like a coach or nutritionist. Lewis says it’s not impossible to do on our own, although she strongly suggests people enlist friends or family to support lifestyle changes.

“To start off, before you change anything, just write down everything that you consume every day for a few days, making sure to include a weekend in there,” she advises. “People are much more successful when they start keeping a food diary and really look at it. The reality is most people know what they should be doing but don’t know where to start. They can start to see where they can make changes when it’s all laid out in front of them.”

From there, a lifestyle coach would suggest starting with one small change that can be made relatively easily. Lewis uses the example of starting to eat breakfast, if, say, you’re the sort of person who skips it, then becomes so hungry later that you overeat. Once eating breakfast is old hat, it’s time to introduce a new habit, like, for instance, taking a walk after lunch. Once you’ve mastered that, cut out that afternoon frappuccino and drink hot tea instead. The key here is to think about what needs to be done, then wade in slowly, getting used to the temperature.

That’s not nearly as sexy as plunging right into, say, the grapefruit diet, which dangles the promise of nine pounds lost over seven short days. We seem to fall for these diets time and again, mainly because we’re not satisfied with gradual weight loss.

“I think you don’t notice gaining two or three or four pounds in one year, but then, you know, cumulatively, after say five years, you start to notice it,” says Lewis. “And then one day it hits you. Nothing fits and then you want to go back to where you were five years ago right away, not realizing that it took you five years to put the weight on in the first place.”

In a 2006 book, Mindless Eating, Dr. Brian Wansink suggested we’d all be better off if we could get used to the idea of taking weight off slowly (the way we put it on in the first place) instead of being determined to take it all off at once. He says gradual weight loss is much easier, since our bodies fight against low-calorie deprivation diets by going into “conservation mode” — making it harder to burn fat. Add to that Wansink thinks there’s a limit to the amount of self-denial we can handle, especially in an environment where our willpower is constantly tested by an abundance of readily available snacks and a constant barrage of food porn. And he was writing before everyone Instagrammed their breakfasts.

For Wansink, the key is to skip the deprivation and, instead, focus on cutting out the mindless eating — finishing off the last slice of pizza just because it’s there, grabbing a donut to break up the day, or grazing on post-dinner snacks while binge-watching a TV series. That’s how we put the weight on — 100 or 200 calories per day that we never even realized we were eating — so, Wansink reasons that’s also the best way to take it off.

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That fits in perfectly with lifestyle management — a diet you don’t even know you’re on. It starts with paying attention, then becomes a lifestyle when you reform most of the bad, mindless habits, and swap in good ones instead. This includes not just diet, but also physical activity, which could be something as small as getting up from your desk every once in a while. And not for a snack.

Best of all, unlike the grapefruit diet, it’s sustainable. And the new mantra in nutritional advice is quickly becoming: “If you can’t do it for the rest of your life, don’t do it at all.”

So maybe this year, resolve to give up dieting, and focus on lifestyle instead.