Why Diets Fail

Many people tell me, “Harley, I’ve done every diet you can think of!” Take my word for it: in the long run, none of them work. Well, obviously they didn’t work, or you wouldn’t be reading this book. Or maybe they worked for a week or two before your weight boomeranged back to its usual number on the scale. The end result is always the same: You think you’re doing everything right, and you still can’t lose the weight. And after a while, you become discouraged—­and why wouldn’t you?

Why does nothing you’ve tried work? You’ve attempted so many diets that you can no longer open your refrigerator door without feeling a massive headache clamp down. There is SO much competing information out there, and so many contradictory recommendations, that it’s no wonder we no longer have any idea what we’re supposed to eat or how we’re supposed to move. Eat low carb. Eat no carbs. Eat ALL carbs. Who could possibly make sense of all these competing prescriptions?

Did you know that more than half of Americans, an astonishing 52 percent, think it’s easier to do their own income taxes than to figure out how to eat healthier? That’s right, filing with the IRS is preferable to knowing what you should have for lunch. And that’s because nutritional advice these days is more confusing than the infamously complex tax code: a 2018 survey found that a whopping 80 percent of Americans say they’ve encountered conflicting nutrition and information. (I’d say the other 20 percent just aren’t looking.)

Let me tell you: It’s time to stop. Enough is enough! We are listening to the wrong people telling us to do the wrong things. Who are these authorities, anyway? A lot of the TV trainers we’re letting guide our fitness decisions are straight out of central casting (and I mean literally straight out of central casting), meaning they have zero credentials in the field of nutrition and have never trained anyone in their lives before their first television appearance.

There’s also a tsunami of diet advice coming from the newly hatched industry of health coaching. It seems just about anyone can sign up for an eight-­week online nutrition course and then hang out his or her shingle as a health coach, blanketing social media with posts and ads about a winning approach (which typically relies on products such as bars, supplements, or shakes). Now, you can’t even scroll through Instagram without being inundated with conflicting nutrition advice.

People are looking to crazier diet solutions than ever before, and where is it getting them? Right back where they started—­maybe even a few pounds heavier. So, before you embark on your next crazy scheme, let me explain why you keep failing and why you will see far more dramatic results from a much simpler and more sensible approach.

People often turn to the more extreme quick fixes, everything from eating like a caveman to swallowing coconut oil straight from the spoon, to spending multiple days a week eating no more than 500 calories. I mean—­are you serious? Losing weight does not have to resemble an all-­out death wish. The caveman lived on nuts and meat alone, but he also stayed active all day long and—­oh, yeah—­he generally died by age 18! In all other ways, our lives are hardly Paleolithic: we pop countless pills, eat mountains of protein bars, and obsessively log everything that passes our lips into diet apps in the hope of losing a few pounds here and there.

Weight-­loss pills, many of which have been rebranded as “anti-­obesity pills,” are still a multi­billion-dollar industry in the United States, an industry that continues to grow at 5 percent a year, despite research that has determined that no evidence exists of any single product that will result in significant weight loss. Even more concerning is that some bodybuilding and weight-­loss pills have been shown to cause liver damage, among other serious health issues.

Whether you call them weight-­loss pills or anti-­obesity pills, they are so questionable that in 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took Belviq (also known as lorcaserin) off the market because of its increased risk of causing cancer. I know you want to lose weight, but it’s not worth upping your chances of developing cancer. No matter what you call them, weight-­loss pills just aren’t worth the risk to your health.

Another sector of the market that’s been exploding is meal-­replacement products, including bars, shakes, and powders designed to deliver the nutrients and vitamins of a full meal in only about 200 calories and are packaged in such a way that you can grab them and go. You’ll see them for sale everywhere—­gyms, chiropractors’ offices, online, and in grocery stores. They’re taking up so much shelf space that they’re crowding out actual food! The sales of these products are expected to reach $24.5 billion by 2025. I understand the appeal: here’s food that’s been formulated to deliver a lot of vitamins in a shelf-­stable product you can throw into your bag, keep in your desk drawer, or even eat one-­handed while driving. But the very fact that these products last as long as they do means they are loaded with artificial ingredients and synthetic forms of vitamins, which taste terrible on their own. And that’s why most of these bars and shakes have more sugar than a candy bar—­so that you can choke them down! If they don’t contain true sugar, they typically have sugar alcohols. Sugar alcohols, when taken in small amounts, don’t impact your blood sugar, but if you ingest them regularly they can cause havoc in your digestive system because your body can’t metabolize them properly—­sorbitol, for example, is a sugar alcohol that has been shown to cause bloating and diarrhea. (No thanks! I’ll take a smoothie made from whole foods any day.)

Worst of all, these meal-­replacement shakes get you away from eating real, natural, whole foods, which will always be the absolute best choice for meeting your nutritional needs.

That said, there are rare times when meal replacements are helpful to keeping your nutritional intake in balance (like when you are traveling, or going through a stressful time, such as moving domiciles). I tell you how to find a decent one on page 81.

Diet and fitness apps are supposed to make it easier for us to eat healthier, but who can decide which one to use from the more than 37,000 options available in the Google Play app store? Even if you do manage to find one you like, who needs another reason to reach for your phone five additional times a day? Listen, I love technology as much as the next person, but the way to better health doesn’t involve hunching over your device and thumb-­typing in every bite of food you eat. We need to use our bodies and brains more, not our phones!

What about cutting out an entire category of food—­carbs—­and gorging on fat and protein in an effort to shed weight by getting into ketosis? Have you ever smelled the breath of someone who’s on a ketogenic diet? It could knock you over! (It often smells like ammonia, because all that excess protein causes your metabolism to produce ammonia as a by-­product.) And reaching ketosis is only possible if you’re willing to put in the time to pee on a stick, invest in a ketone-­measuring device (many of which require you to prick your own finger), and pay top dollar for no-­carb tortillas (that crumble when you roll them up) or locate obscure ingredients (like psyllium husks) to make your own keto buns to ensure you actually start burning fat.

When you’re coping with all these issues—­and I haven’t even mentioned the headaches, irritability, fatigue, leg cramps, and nausea that can signify that you’re starting to get into a fat-­burning state—­how are you supposed to carry on with the rest of your life, much less get the exercise you need to be healthy? And how can you possibly stay on any such extreme plan for more than a few agonizing weeks?

The answer is, you can’t. That’s why you’re reading this book. These aggressive strategies might help you squeeze back into your favorite jeans by next Friday, but they are wreaking major havoc on your health, and the results DO NOT LAST, for a whole multitude of reasons.

Here’s where the yo-­yoing comes in. You lose 15 pounds by surviving (barely) on a high-­fat, no-­carb diet for a month, but then when you finally get exhausted and start putting real food into your poor depleted body again, your weight immediately balloons 20 pounds above your original starting point. How else is your poor confused metabolism supposed to react?

Trust me, I realize what I’m up against because I know exactly how much crazy stuff is out there. I admit that some of the better-­known, more mainstream programs—­with point systems and so forth—­can be effective, but in many cases they take too long for the kind of results people want (and deserve), and some are also prohibitively expensive.

So, let’s give up all this nutty stuff. None of it works. It’s just crazy.