it’s not you, it’s the diet.

Tomorrow is February 5th, and that means we are just six measly weeks into the new year of 2018.

By the sixth week of the year, a whopping 92% of people are going to quit their new years resolutions. And guess what the top resolution is every single year? Some form of: lose weight and/or eat healthier.

I’m all for people living “healthy” – YOLO right? Better take care of our bodies so they last as long as possible. I’m on board that train. The problem I have is that the cultural assumption is that losing weight produces health.

The diet and weight loss industry profits approximately 60 billion dollars each year. Yet, more than ever America’s population is classified as obese and unhealthy. What gives? Why are we pouring money into an industry that in fact actually CREATES obesity?

You read that right. The diet industry actually perpetuates the weight gain cycle. And why wouldn’t they? They make gobs of money selling you products or weight loss plans that “you fail” so you go back and buy more products. The truth is, it’s not actually you that failed, it’s the diet itself.

The diet industry is alive and well my friends, and it’s because we keep buying into the idea that weight loss = health. The truth is, there is a mountain of scientific evidence that shows the opposite. Weight loss and weight cycling (yo-yo dieting) can actually lead serious consequences related to our psychological, physical and emotional well-being. Not only do diets fail to produce the long-term results that we want, they are marketed so that when we do fail, we feel like it’s somehow our fault. We were ‘weak’ or ‘lazy’ or ‘too unmotivated’ to actually maintain weight loss. False.

It turns out that people who accept their bodies as they actually are tend to eat better and exercise more. They are medically better off and feel happier too. In a Health At Every Size study conducted by Dr. Linda Bacon, PhD., people on weight loss programs compared to control groups, neither lost weight. That’s right, the dieters, two years out, did not lose weight, but they had been dragged through another weight loss/regain cycle. (read more here)

Praise be to Oprah and nearly everything that she stands for, but “lifestyle change diets” like Weight Watchers fall into this category too. (They profited $13.3 millions dollars this year, FYI). And yes, Weight Watchers is just as bad as other diets. It’s shaming, and restrictive and fails you. Any eating plan that suggests that you can hoard points/calories just to use them all up later is setting you up to restrict food and over-eat. Example: I’m going to skip breakfast this morning so I have more points to eat a bigger lunch. That’s restricting, and then over-eating. Not cool, Weight Watchers, not cool.

In what other world do we continue to open our wallets to an industry that fails us? If your iPhone stopped working after 6 weeks would you continue to buy a new one over and over? No, you’d ditch it. You’d stop giving Apple your money without much hesitation. Yet the idea of applying this concept to the diet industry doesn’t exist, because we believe WE are the problem and not the diet. But…it’s not you, it’s the diet.