Why Diets Don’t Work – The Sneaky Secret Every Diet Shares

IF YOU EVER Google “What is the best diet?” the first page of results is kind of amazing.

Once you get beyond the ads, you’ll see a variety of recommendations for diets that are very different. The ketogenic diet wants you to remove almost all carbs. Carnivore-style diets instruct you to avoid all fruits and vegetables. Vegan diets say to skip animal products, and yes, that includes butter and honey. Mediterranean and Zone diets suggest consuming a mix of proteins, carbs, and fats.

That’s a lot of conflicting recommendations. But the truth about dieting is that many diets work. Each search result shows you a plan that is fundamentally different from the others, and each has endless examples of success.

Yet it’s so clear that food—in general—has been made the enemy that there
are entire diets built around not eating. And you actually spend time and energy rationalizing all the reasons you’ll be able to make it work: Eating soup and drinking juice four times per day can’t be that bad. If I never eat at restaurants again, I’ll save money. I don’t even like food, so I’m sure fasting will be easy.

There are two ways to look at the whole diet situation. You either assume you can’t win or you realize that the obstacle you’ve been trying to avoid—“bad” food—is part of the solution to dietary freedom. Hint: The second perspective is the better one. Luckily, there are easy ways to shift your thinking.

Stick With Simple

One of the most underrated resources for weight loss is the National Weight Control Registry (NWCR). It doesn’t provide a specific diet. Instead, the NWCR learns from more than 10,000 people who have lost weight—and kept it off—for years.

The first thing you’ll realize is that the things these people say work for them are rarely the tips you see in popular diet books. They’re almost too boring, which is why you don’t hear about this information more often. Exciting, life-revamping strategies (“I’m cutting out all sugar,” “I’m in ketosis!”) generate far more interest and engagement.

I’ve seen this with my own clients. If I were to try to convince you to, say, eat more fruit or protein as a means of losing weight, the likelihood of acceptance is low. But if I were to tell you to try intermittent fasting, then the initial rate of adherence is high. The end goal is the same (eat less food), but the novelty and complication of fasting directly affect your willingness to engage (even if it’s not desirable or sustainable).

The “boring” strategies are what scientists call valid and reliable, and there
are many advantages to these unexciting recommendations. New, bold ideas are rigid and difficult to follow. They break easily. It’s why every extreme plan falls apart with the least amount of friction. The examples are endless. A small amount of carbs takes you out of ketosis. Eating solid foods ruins your detox. Consuming any food ends your fast.

It’s far better to have a flexible dietary structure that you can bend without it ever snapping. The more comfort you experience on a diet, the more likely you are to keep the weight off. Only about 10 to 20 percent of people who lose weight are successful at this.

And yet a study in the journal Obesity found that dieters who stuck closely to their plan were much more successful in keeping weight off more than two years after they started the plan. Instead of the usual grim stats, people with high adherence regained only 50 percent of the weight they lost, which is a big difference. In this particular research, people with low adherence regained 99 percent of the weight they lost.

And that’s what makes the NWCR so compelling. Its study subjects have amazing success by doing boring things incredibly well. Here are some of the common practices of people who achieve long-term weight loss:

• Eating carbs
• Enjoying breakfast
• Avoiding extreme restrictions and gimmicks
• Limiting but not completely removing ultra-processed foods
• Prioritizing movement

There are a few more habits—such as weekly weigh-ins—but 80 percent of them are based on mastering simple concepts. It’s not about the extremes. It’s about the things you can easily repeat that keep you on track and make it almost impossible to get off track.

How You Can Lose Weight Without Dieting

There is no single best diet. I repeat: Many diets work. And they all ultimately rely on the same trick. When you remove carbs, you eat fewer calories and eat less. When you fast, you eat fewer calories and eat less. When you restrict gluten or dairy, you eat fewer calories and eat less. When you go paleo, you cut out other food groups and eat less.

Carbs don’t make you fat. Fat doesn’t make you fat. Neither does the timing of your meals, gluten, or the glycemic index. Either you eat too much or you don’t. Having a plan that helps you stay full without breaking your will is what makes this doable. Embrace the big three: Consume foods that nourish your body, protect your sanity, and avoid guilt.

If you love carbs, don’t build your diet around keto. If you barely have time for friends and family, don’t start with a program that requires six days of exercise per week.

That’s not to say those are bad plans. It’s also not to say you won’t end up following a similar plan one day. But if you want to get to a better tomorrow, you need a plan that supports a better today. That means focusing on behaviors that are easy for you to maintain and that make a big difference.

And then stick with it. If consuming fewer calories than you expend is the engine for weight loss, adherence is the fuel. It’s what allows a diet to deliver results. But adherence is hard if you hate what you’re eating, are constantly stressed or anxious, or don’t believe you have the flexibility to be adaptable. Your plan, like your newfound approach to decoding diets, should feel resilient.

And really, your diet shouldn’t be Google-able. The best diet for you is just that: for you.

A version of this article originally appeared in the September 2023 issue of Men’s Health magazine.