By Jeff Harrison
PHC General Manager

It’s a new year.  A fresh start; a new beginning; a clean slate – however you want to define it.  And when it comes to my area of expertise, a new year means a lot of hope by the masses placed on erasing last year’s bad nutrition and exercises habits…with new ones.

The Great Diet Dupe

I shouldn’t have to say this because it should be more than common knowledge by now, but diets simply don’t work.  Yet every year a new “diet” plan emerges and some of the best selling books of all time have been diet books.  Am I missing something? Nope. But what I know and what others want to believe is vastly different.  I know the truth, and it’s not based on emotion but fact.

The Word DIE is in Diet

Diets are a sure fire way to destroy, flat out kill the basic physiology of the human body.  Why then do they sometimes show initial promise?  It’s an illusion (a very, very small percentage of people on a particular diet will see long term, positive results) and anyone who drops calories will always see an initial weight loss, but long term success is 99.9% guaranteed failure. Here are some of the many true, hard facts about diets:

• They destroy your metabolism through week after week of calorie restriction by slowing down the processes that keep you alive.  It’s your body’s way of sparing energy due to the decreased influx of energy (calories).
• They eventually lead to massive breakdown of muscle tissue, further decreasing metabolic rate.  Muscle tissue is one of the primary calorie burning furnaces of the body (organs are the top, but without them…well, you figure it out.)
• The drop in metabolism and calorie burning tissue causes any “weight” loss that does occur to be quickly reversed when normal eating is resumed due to the damaged metabolism.
• Generally require that you give up your favorite foods for weeks and months at a time—highly unrealistic for the human psyche.
• Inevitably lead to stalled fat loss and fat loss plateaus.
• Plummets natural hormone levels and overall lethargy, frustration, and misery.
• Works against the body, not with the body.
• Yadda, yadda, yadda.

Don’t buy into gimmicks.  Don’t buy into hype.  Don’t buy into lies. It will only leave you in a swirling eddy of sneaking weight gain that this time next year is just another few more pounds to drop.