Diets (still) Don't Work

Diets are all the thing now. Young people believe thinner is better, and set their sights on low weight as something worth enormous sacrifice. But they don't work. Don't take my word for it, ask someone who has tried dieting. Ninety-five percent of the time, they'll tell you they regained any weight lost, and sometimes more. Diets do not work.

A few diet facts:

1. Normal healthy body fat content (according to diet specialist Covert Bailey) is 15% for men, 22% for women. The object of any sensible diet would be to achieve these levels of body fat, not just lose weight.

2. Eating a low-carbohydrate, low-calorie diet programs the body for famine, and makes it store more of the calories it consumes as fat.

3. If you lose weight on such low-calorie, low-carbohydrate diets, of seven pounds lost, only two will be fat. That means the bulk of the weight you lose on such diets is lean muscle mass. So the stuff that burns the weight off vanishes 250% more often than the stuff you want to lose! (Source: a dietician lecturing at my health club who weighed me in water, then on dry land to determine my body fat. This was long ago, so the fancy electronic scales that tell you body fat content in an instant weren't available then.)

Incidentally, if you exercise as part of a weight loss program, you'll often gain weight at the beginning as you add lean muscle mass--muscle is heavier than fat.You can lose weight, generally, without reducing caloric intake if you increase the level of activity / exercise. The best weight-losing, fat-burning exercise is aerobic, and mild. The anaerobic strain of pumping iron can work too, but is not as effective.

4. Diets are most often counter-productive. In fact, Covert Bailey says he has only had success with "weight loss" diets when treating people who need to gain weight. As mentioned before: low-carbohydrate, low-calorie diets program the body to replace lean muscle mass with fat.

This is why anorexics may look skinny, but are actually fat. The fat is marbled throughout their muscles, so they are weak. How fat? As much as 41% of their body weight is fat. If you do exercise to lose weight, you'll first lose this fat marbled throughout your muscles. Love handles vanish last, and typically from the top to the bottom of your body. Fat thighs vanish last. 

5. The high-protein, "fat-burning" diets like Atkins, South Beach and "Ketogenic" diets are very unhealthy.

Here's Proof that the Atkins Diet Works Like Chemotherapy By Sickness-Induced Starvation. Excerpt: "Ketogenic refers to the creation of a state of ketosis. Ketosis is a natural condition the body resorts to under harsh circumstances, such as illness or starvation. When people are ill they need to be recuperating, not gathering and preparing foods. Loss of appetite facilitates recovery. A kindness of Nature for starving people is to quiet the pain of hunger. After 3 days with no food the body enters a state of ketosis and the pain of dying is relieved. "

What about the Initial Rapid Weight Loss? "The initial weight loss [of keto diets] is rapid, and therefore very rewarding, for the desperate dieter. Most of this loss, however, is water loss, rather than fat loss. With little carbohydrate in the diet the body resorts to using its glycogen stores of glucose. Glycogen, stored in the liver and muscles, can meet the average person’s glucose needs for about 12 to 18 hours. With each gram of glycogen is stored 2.7 grams of water. The average body stores 300 grams of glycogen. Depletion of the body’s glycogen would result in an almost overnight weight loss of 1110 grams (37 ounces or over [2] pounds). The ketones also cause a strong diuretic effect on the kidneys, resulting in losses of large amounts of fluid. The [keto diet's] carbohydrate ceiling for weight loss may be as low as 15 grams, depending on the individual. This is only 60 calories of carbohydrate, which means 1/3 of a baked potato, 1/3 cup of rice, or one orange daily could be your limit of carbohydrate intake in order to remain in sufficient ketosis to suppress your appetite."

6. Diets do not defy the laws of physics. You must eat fewer calories relative to your level of activity to lose weight no matter what magical mechanism the diet may claim makes it unique. (see The Keto Diet is a Recipe for Disaster) Not even the Keto diet claims drinking alcohol is part of its approved intake.

This means that to be successful, a weight loss diet must emphasize low-calorie-density foods. A 500-calorie steak is about as big as your palm. Fat and oil are also high-calorie-density foods. Five hundred calories of potatoes is an enormous serving bowl full. Which one do you think will make you feel full sooner, and stop eating, the steak or the potatoes?

What does work?

Exercise increases your calories metabolized in a healthy way. The more lean body mass you have, the more calories you burn. Just exercising can help you lose weight in a healthy way. Eating less calorie-dense foods can help too.


It takes about 20 minutes for your body to register that you have had enough to eat, so slowing down such consumption can be effective. Also, studies say smaller plates can be effective (portions appear bigger, and your body is easy to fool that way).

Most important: Don't diet. Change your lifestyle to include healthy food and exercise.

My personal endorsement is for the Whole Foods, Plant-Based (WFPB) lifestyle. I'm certainly not a perfectionist about it--I'll eat turkey for Thanksgiving, and an egg once in a while...I'll even take a drink--but it's worked for 30 years now, and while it's not always easy to follow, it has served me well. It is easy to follow whenever I think of the pain I'm avoiding by eating healthy, though.


My own experience is that I started having arthritis, along with lots of upper-respiratory infections in my forties. Before this, I ate lots of meat, drank lots of milk, and enjoyed the American diet to the full. By sheer chance, I ate WFPB for about a week. The change in my energy level was very noticeable. Within two weeks, the arthritis was gone, and the post-nasal drip ceased. Within a few months, I'd lost ten pounds and significantly reduced my tendency to get respiratory ailments.

And my experience has been replicated and exceeded by others. See these testimonials...(not lightweight...here's a guy who abandoned keto...and lost 100 lbs!).

You might also check out an account of the largest study of the connection between diet and health ever conducted--The China Study. One of the directors of this study, Colin Campbell, was a Columbia University biochemist who also discovered "aflatoxin"--a mold-based carcinogen. Campbell was raised on a dairy farm, where he ate lots of meat and milk. He currently tours the country promoting WFPB diets. The epidemiology bears out his findings, too. The "Blue Zones" where populations live longest tend to favor high-starch diets like WFPB.

Update #1:

The high-protein, "fat-burning" diets like Atkins, South Beach and "Ketogenic" diets are seldom healthy....and yet, here's the best, recent discussion of the keto diet I've heard that contradicts that slightly. Worth listening to all the way to the end. (Cites actual science! Not all faddish / bad! Endorses, with big caveats, veggie keto...with the science to back it up!) 

Update #2:

FYI, Scales that electronically calculate fat content are available all over the place.

Then there's diet expert Dr. McDougall's comment about the Wheat Belly diet. Hint: he's not a fan.

Here's Colin Campbell, who worked on the China Study, the largest study of the connection between diet and health ever conducted, demonstrating his conclusions.

And if that's not convincing enough, here's what the low-carb diet promoters vs. the starch-based diet promoters look like. Those selling low-carb diets are universally fat people. The starch-based diet promoters are lean.

I know it's difficult to persuade anyone they've been fooled (harder than fooling them!), especially in the face of weight actually lost! WTF! Still, if the above is true, it means that losing weight often means losing lean body weight rather than fat. Less than optimum, in my humble opinion.

I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions. You already know mine...





Update #3:[Video removed]...so Update #4: Humans have a variety of digestions. This TED talk reports observed differences in blood glucose levels after consuming the same food. The absorption of the same thing is very different. For example some people can eat ice cream and their glucose levels spike. Others can consume the same thing and not have a spike in their blood glucose.

The rate at which food becomes glucose has previously been measured as "glycemic index." This is one reason people complain about a breakfast of cereal leaving them hungry later. Sugary cereal has a very high glycemic index, which means the sugar enters the blood rapidly, and disappears just as rapidly, leaving the cereal eater hungry. Bacon and eggs, on the other hand has a much lower glycemic index, trickling the glucose into the bloodstream over a longer period of time. The glucose trickle is much healthier than the glucose spike, so lower glycemic index is healthier, and less prone to provoking that late-morning hunger sensation. Incidentally, oatmeal has an even lower glycemic index than bacon and eggs, so there's no need for a "hearty" breakfast of eggs and bacon to avoid that late-morning hunger.

What the video says, in effect, is that glycemic index is not fixed for all people. Some digestions, and the microbiome of bacteria that guide them, are different. The diversity makes evolutionary sense, too, since diverse diets would survive better than a single diet.

What the video omits mentioning, however, is that fiber is one of the ingredients most likely to slow down that absorbtion of  sugar. Other things being equal, whole wheat bread, with its burden of fiber that digestion must slowly avoid (but which feeds the microbiome), has a lower glycemic index than white bread. So that Whole Foods, Plant-Based diet still is a likely winner in the low glycemic index sweepstakes.