Before you start your next diet, try reducing your intake of wishful thinking.
Although the truth may not be pretty, the truth is the truth. Most diets fail. It’s not that the diets wouldn’t work if people actually followed them. It’s that most real people don’t actually stick to diets. Dieters usually start off with a bang. But most fizzle out long before the job is done.
As a psychologist who has devoted much of his career to studying the huge gap between what people sincerely intend to do and what they actually do, I’m not scolding. Far from it. I know that failing to do what we know we should do - and doing it consistently for as long as it takes to actually get results - is just the way we’re wired. It’s human nature.
True, there are those among us who can stick to a diet. But, frankly, these people are as rare as people who are double-jointed, can play the piano with their nose, or can spell “backwards” backwards without any hesitation. The rest of us – we “normals” – generally do a lousy job of hanging in there long enough to get the results we want.
Poor follow through is a fact of life. You know it, and the diet industry knows it, too. So why do we – and they - continue to pretend that it’s not a problem? If we know for a fact that most dieters won’t follow through, why do weight loss programs promise everyone results that will only be achieved by the very small percentage of people who do actually follow through? And more importantly, why do we ignore the reality of our own experience and buy these programs anyway?
We keep looking for "the right diet" - the right weight loss program to stick to - when the real problem is that we don’t stick to anything! And as long as we ignore the real problem, the chances of being successful are not much greater than they are for the inebriated fellow who tries to solve the problem of not being able to find his keys in the dark where he dropped them by crossing the street to look for them under a street light.
An exciting new diet can certainly nourish your optimism. But it won’t change reality. A new diet is nothing more than a fresh set of restrictions that you probably won’t stick to any better than you stuck to the many (once fresh) sets of restrictions that came before it. Again, "not sticking" is the real problem. And like it or not, until you figure out how to stick to a diet – any diet - you have a much better chance of losing hope than losing weight.
So where does this mega-dose of reality leave you?
At the very least, it should have implications for how you evaluate the promises that weight loss programs make. Just as you’d be wary of entering a building that was designed by a team of architects who decided to pretend that gravity doesn’t exist, you should be wary of buying into a diet program that’s being sold by weight loss experts who pretend that poor follow through is the exception rather than the rule.
Before you start any new weight loss program, ask yourself, “Seriously, how well am I likely to follow through?” Then ask yourself, “What can I realistically expect to accomplish given my own actual record of follow through?” Remember, if a weight loss program only benefits people who stick to it, it benefits very few real people.
And if you’re ready to take the whole truth by the horns, then, seriously, consider swearing off weight loss programs completely until you’ve solved the real problem, that is, until you’ve figured out how to actually stick with any diet or program you choose. “No way!” you say, “That could take forever.” Well, guess how long it will take to lose weight without following through?”
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