to think the diet industry is utterly evil?

[ICBINEG]

been watching 'The men that made us thin' and am simply overwhelmed.

So diets don't work....most people end up heavier than if they had not dieted at all...one guy was like "well duh! if they worked we would lose our customers"....another wrote a book aimed at teenage girls including the advice to " buy scales and keep them secret from your parents"

The constant stream of adverts aimed at middle aged women are seen by children who by age 6-7 have self-esteem issues and can quote the number of calories in most foods...

My evil-ometer is broken.

I think saying the diets work but the people fail is just mad. Who are diets for if not people? It's like saying the operation was successful but the patient failed to survive.

I have never been on a diet, thank goodness. I have somehow escaped this total mindfuck con that seems to have perpetuated itself on half the people I know.

Thewicked- yes, smaller amounts of fat satisfy, I could eat a low fat version in huge quantities and still feel unsatisfied.

And what many people forget, is that natural fats in meat, fish and eggs etc. is where the vitamins are, the very things your body might be craving on a low fat processed diet.

the diet industry is really clever. People wouldn't go to a bank clerk to get there teeth checked out but they will go and buy a book written by a celeb to learn how to lose weight, then wonder why it doesn't work long term.

The problem in this country now is that we live in a society where everybody drives, nearly everybody works (unless on maternity etc), food is plentiful, it's trendy to go out eating maybe once or twice a week, alcohol is freely available and is drunk in many homes nightly. Temptation to put something in your mouth is everywhere and once you condition your body to that, it is very difficult for the majority of people to stick to a rigid regime where the treats they enjoyed almost daily have now become forbidden!

When I was a child, we had one car so we walked everywhere. It was 2 miles a day for me, my mum and my sister. Only my dad worked so we had no meals out, no takeaways as they were a relatively new concept and my dad maybe had maybe a few pints on a Friday night and my
mum maybe a glass of wine or beer once a week.

We had smaller portions and very little by way of treats.

Needless to say we were all slim!

In today's world it's way too easy to put weight on simply because you can! The diet industry targets this and is now bigger than ever as more and more people are overweight.

I think that if there was an exam at school and a few failed, most passed, and a few did well, I'd think: those kids failed.

If 87% of the class failed, I'd think the school failed.

Marvellous thread. I have only recently learned a bit about the effect of hormones on our weight, store fat, etc. Worth reading up on.

"diet" means the food you eat
"diet" does not mean losing weight
changing one's "diet" from that of a fat person to that of a thin person involves understanding how much food a thin person needs (not much)
and understanding the different types of food
from then on its easy

5 years ago I went to weight watchers and lost 3 stone.
Because I live in a fairly small place, I still regularly bump into the 20 or so people who were there at the same time, 5 years on we are all fatter than we were.
The diets that the industry peddle are nearly all designed to be unsustainable. I only know a handful of people who have followed WW or SW and kept the weight off long term, and these are the ones who are evangelical about it, and are happy to tell their failed counterparts that they're not following it properly.
The diets are unsustainable because you are not feeding your body what it needs, and because of that, you get unbearable cravings which very, very few people can resist.

I did WW 12 years ago.
It took me 9 weeks to realise that I had to eat as if I was already slim to get slim.
Hence why I've never gone back up to 12 stone.

Getting my head around TDEE was a lightbulb moment
and is why after putting a stone back on over ten years, I'm now finding it easy to stay at the weight I want.

BUT
as the TV programme made clear, WW and SW and the rest stop making money when you succeed so have no vested interest in helping you do so.

THe industry are just cashing in on the fact that people want to eat what they did when they were fat rather than what is right now they are slim (hence the yo-yo)

There's nothing intrisically wrong with diets. The problem lies with people and choices.

Any food plan that promotes less calories than your BMR is going to work for 99% of the population. It's what you do afterwards that is the important bit and sadly most people fall off the wagon and revert back to old ways. That's not the fault of the diet company any more than McDonalds are responsible for making people obese. You pay your money, you make your choice.

But why anyone actually pays for a diet plan is beyond me when the internet is full of great advice and genuinely decent ways of changing your lifestyle to make long term gains. There is a shed load of real education available for all of us to learn a bit about nutrition. And the best thing is it's all freely available so we don't need to pay Weightwatchers or XYZ diet company.

As an aside I've never read anything about low fat, high carb diets . Sounds a stupid idea so is no wonder why it doesn't work.

A friend is advertising diet drops or some pills on FB £35 a time. Apparently they work great if you stick to the food plan, the food plan is tea for breakfast, one tablespoon of milk and a tiny portion of meat and veg for lunch and dinner

And people are falling for this and buying then

Good points on here!

If you 'go on a diet' you will end up fatter.

If you 'change your diet' then you may lose weight.

In light of this I am giving my current diet (food that I eat) a stern looking at....there are I think some real changes from what I was eating when I was obese. But then I am sometimes feel as though I am 'dieting' because I am hungry all the time.

I don't know - I think I will be in trouble down the line....

More changes are probably needed....

coTan I totally agree that if over 80% of the people using your product end up worse than if they hadn't used your product then your product has failed.

People are people! It isn't like the will power issue isn't known about! If your diet doesn't work for the average person then it doesn't work.....

Can you imagine the NHS handing out drugs that helped 16% of people taking them and made 84% worse?

Well they are sending people to WW so I guess they are!

I have been saying this about we etc for YEARS. Where's the sense in a business plan that means you would lose all your customers if your product worked long term?

Ww particularly does my head in with their utterly shite for you food range. I could weep seeing people buying it and knowing they are thinking, oh that must be good for you, I've even checked some of the products and the "normal" range products next to it for half the price have been lower calorie/sugar etc.

But anyway they should be teaching people to go back to basics and cook, not flogging processed crap that screws up their body even more.

its simple really. if calories in are greater than calories out you put on weight. if calories in are less than calories out you lose it. how you use the calories you put in, how your individual metabolism works, how much energy you use in a day is down to you. some people need lots and some people less. some people want lots and either eat them and become obese or eat them and then exercise a lot to burn them off. I have been morbidly obese for many years. my health deteriorated so I went to SW. I use it as a tool to help along with many other tools. blaming this diet or that diet for being obese is bonkers. we all know our bodies and we all know how much we need to put in them in order not to gain weight. however, some of us choose to eat more or eat more for other reasons.

I haven't seen the programme yet, but it seems pointless (and naive) to judge the dieting industry on promises that it doesn't make (maintaining weight loss after a diet has finished). I would think that most diets do result in weight loss, but that weight loss isn't sustained afterwards because previous habits resulting in weight gain aren't changed.

You could criticise all sorts of industries for putting profit-making over altruism. What about the pharmaceutical industry, providing drugs that counteract or alleviate lifestyle related issues, which could instead be eradicated through lifestyle changes?

From what I have learned from following advice in a book Eating Less, if we are given instructions like when on a diet, it does not change the neurons in our prefrontal cortex and therefore the changes are short term. If we make our own free choice about what to eat, and this means no restrictions at all in what we can choose (diets always have restrictions and rules), then changes in free choice behaviour cause new neural pathways to form, and better eating will become easier. I have to say that initially it is not easy because I have to feel the addictive desire to eat for the wrong reason then make the choice. If I do choose to eat, consequences include a return to poor health and discomfort. My choice. There is no emphasis on weight loss because that is irrelevant. A side effect I have noticed IS weightless though, but I don't spend time thinking about it, it just happens.

Great thread. I agree the 'low fat' stuff is full of utter rubbish. I see female colleagues eating low-fat this and low-fat that in a desperate attempt to lose weight. Fretting and panicking about food and talking about being 'good' or 'naughty' whenever biscuits or cake are being offered round. None of them do any exercise whatsoever

It's partly exasperating and partly really sad. Such a waste of money and energy and resources.

'If we make our own free choice about what to eat, and this means no restrictions at all in what we can choose (diets always have restrictions and rules), then changes in free choice behaviour cause new neural pathways to form, and better eating will become easier.'

This makes sense and is really interesting Tabby1963

I don't understand why a person will go on a diet temporarily in order to lose weight. Isn't it obvious that the weight will go back on again?

I don't understand why specific diets are so popular. Unless you're an athlete or are on doctor's orders, that is. What's wrong with fruit, veg, meat, fish, carbs and no sweets or crisps?

I don't understand why people get themselves so tied up in knots about what common sense would say was probably healthy and what probably is not. So, I am told, that saturated fat is OK whereas potatoes aren't because in essense they're no different than sugar.

I don't understand why people see healthy eating as a moral imperative and not just an ingrained habit.

I don't understand why people shove sweets at children, who are at the habit forming stage.

Can anyone help me?

I don't understand t

Low-fat foods are just a marketing ploy to get people to feel OK about eating junk.

The problem is the food we eat. Theres far too much processed and rubbish food around and most of it is pushed as snacks, which we don't need.

If we just ate mostly natural, proper food (including the odd slice of home made cake) and didn't snack or drink excessively, then I'm sure most people would not be fat (including me)

It's commercial greed like everything else. Milk the unsuspecting public for everything you can. because they will believe anything as long as the advert is convincing
What makes me most cross is that the Nhs is promoting this crap.
Rather than teach people simple nutritional lessons and stress the fact that food in should = energy expended, plain and simple, you get given vouchers to joins these slimming clubs. I was given a leaflet by the GP once promoting a Weetabix diet FGS!

I finally finished watching the programme and I actually like the honesty of the finance guy who said that's how they make money. I personally don't agree with diets don't work. Diets do work, you lose weight. Maintenance is where people fail, and yes if people go back to bad habits they will get into the same or a worse state than before they dieted. But theres no point blaming the diet, the diet is what you did as a result of getting there in the first place. The diet didn't get you there, you got there then you dieted, you lost weight then did the same thing and again, that's not the diets fault.

Equally its not McDonald's fault I got obese, it was my fault because I chose to have a super sized meal in there rather than pick a salad. I know what the healthy option is. I know the price isn't that much different. But I made the unhealthy choice. And that's no ones fault other than mine.

Diets work if they're healthy and sustainable. Fad diets don't.