Don’t diet
There is a big difference between improving our nutrition and dieting.
In my opinion improving our nutrition means we are offering ourselves something healthy, dieting means we are denying ourselves something or restricting what we are eating.
If we follow a diet which either restricts how much we eat or what types of food we eat, we can get in trouble if we eat less than we need in calories, or what we need in nutrients.
Our body needs a certain level of calories and nutrients to run well. We need calories for energy and we need nutrients for wellbeing.
Restrictive diets can deplete our energy, our mood, and ironically even negatively affect how we look, which may have been the reason we tried them in the first place.
There is a lot of evidence showing that people who try restrictive diets actually gain more weight back than they lose (1).
This is for many reasons. Firstly, if we restrict our calories too far the body downregulates the metabolism in order to conserve energy, which means if we go back to eating normal amounts the body is more likely to store it as fat rather than burn it off.
Secondly, if we restrict our calories or macronutrients excessively the body can enter a catabolic state, where it breaks down its own muscle as a source of energy rather than just fat, but it is our muscle which uses up the most calories so our metabolism is effectively reduced as above.
Thirdly, when we don’t eat enough calories or nutrients the body is starved for what it needs, so we may feel tired, or depressed, or anxious, or irritable, or run down, which drives us psychologically to refuel in order to refill our stores and meet our needs. This refuelling can be excessive, in proportion to the restriction, so people may find they binge on high fat, high calorie, or high carbohydrate foods until they feel replete.
Therefore, people can start out trying to restrict calories in order to lose weight or feel better, but find the restriction encourages them to overeat, reduces their metabolism and muscle mass resulting in fat gain and makes them feel tired and low and stressed.
Thus I suggest what I consider a better way forwards, which is to not diet but to eat healthily instead. To work on improving our nutrition rather than restricting ourselves. In this way we can fuel and nourish ourselves so we look and feel good as we give ourselves what we need to thrive.
References
Ross, J. The diet cure. London: Penguin; 2001.