What other industry could survive, let alone flourish with a failure rate of 95% ? Even more astounding, what industry has repeat business clientele with such a rate of failure.



It makes no sense ! If you blame yourself for a product or program not working, then maybe you will go back over and over again. Maybe you will go back when you see all the commercials, adverts and billboards that show all the people it has (supposedly) worked for. Most weight loss programs and products count on you blaming yourself (and not them) when results are not forthcoming or not long lived.

This gets me a little ticked off and I know it applies just as much to men as it does for women, but for women every failure erodes their own self perception. Year in and year out their self concept is chipped away at until they feel they have no control whatsoever. They may be treated badly at work or by their family. Aspirations are a thing of their past, they just exist with the cards they have been dealt and fail to dream yet alone realize anything better than that which they have already. It is a hateful scenario and it is a hateful cycle with a ripple effect that just ruins a person's life.

With such a enormous failure rate how is it then that we always seem to think that the blame lies with us ?

At one end of the spectrum there are the people that fund the infomercial business. They buy that 5 minute a day exercise machine or that cellulite cream, at 3 in the morning they are punching in their credit card details for that fat zapper or carb blocker. They are looking for minimal effort on their part and in return they want dramatic results. Deep down though, do they really expect those results, I doubt it, I think that they just feel better as in some way they are feeling pro active.

Sure you can give away control but you can never give away responsibility. If you think that you will be rewarded just by the purchase decision then you are fooling yourself. The client that tells me that they have worked with several personal trainers and not seen the results they had expected is the client that is putting in sub maximal effort. A trainer can only be responsible for your behavior one hour at a time and even then they cannot do the work for you.

The body is wiser than our conscious mind. Treat it badly and it will find ways to counter act your poor choices. I used to compete and that backlash was one of the main reasons that I left the sport of bodybuilding. I would spend months dieting my weight down to the single digit body fat percentages demanded by the sport but right after show time I would start regaining those pounds at an alarming speed. When I first started competing it did not phase me as I was certainly rewarding myself in the 'off season' with foods that I knew would pack on some pounds. I knew I would be dieting soon enough for the next show so a little indulgence in the interim seemed just fine by me. Then as I competed year in year out that cycle became really old, the joke about having two closets, one for pre contest clothes and one for off season clothes was wearing a little thin. The weight fluctuations bothered me and so I changed things around. I dieted for my shows with my usual discipline (nothing like having to wear a bikini in front of a room full of people to keep you on track) but afterwards I kept my diet super strict but not quite so calorie restrictive. The result, I still ended up heavier, I might just as well have enjoyed the gain as I ended up in the same place anyway.

"for every action there is an opposite reaction of equal force"

Our bodies like 'homeostasis.' Our bodies prefer to keep and even keel and seek to maintain that steady state. When we go too far off track our bodies control center has the ability to adjust and adapt despite the external influences we are imposing. One of the ways our bodies can counter act our own behavior is to increase or decrease our metabolic rate. We know we have genetic metabolic factors, we also know we can enhance our metabolism by eating the right foods and by being physically active. However sometimes with good intentions we push too hard and it is then that our body has the ability to shove right back by slowing our metabolic rate to preserve the very energy we are trying to burn.

Very Low Calorie Diets (VLCD) are a major culprit. A study published in 'Medicine & Science in Exercise & Sport' monitored a number of female gymnasts and runners. The athletes who ate the fewest calories per day had the highest body fat percentages. Due to low calories the body had the ability to slow down its own metabolic rate to conserve energy. We have known for decades about this "Starvation Mode" but it doesn't seem to stop people from cutting calories to 'starvation' levels.

As a species mankind needs to be able to do this. Food supplies were not always constant. Certain foods were only available certain times of the year and other foods were only available when the opportunity arose (hunting). Our bodies have always known to adapt when food supplies were low and we are not a million years away from the times when this was a good thing. The leading cause of death until the 20th Century was starvation. Mankind has been on this planet for about 5 million years, so the concept of dieting to look better is a pretty recent thing. It was about 3.2 million years ago that we eventually got ourselves upright. 'Lucy' was found in Ethiopa back in 1974. If it took almost 2 million years to get off all fours then it could easily take just as long for us to feel comfortable existing with minimal body fat and eating foods that are not born of the land. Evolution or no evolution we must accept that our bodies are smarter and less superficial than us.

With VLCD our metabolism is able to slow down to conserve energy. At first these diets do indeed work and we will see our weight reduce. What we do is a mere inconvenience, we might deem our VLCD as something almost admirable, something that takes huge self discipline, but in the great scheme of things our inner working can correct our misbehaving and give us a slap on the wrist as a reminder.

We reduce our calories and often the calories we do eat come from poor sources. We lose weight for a while and then our metabolism slows down and we 'plateau.' We may cut our calories even farther to try to lose the weight but this just digs us even deeper into the whole. If the number on the scale is now moving downwards it is now because you are losing muscle. Fat is more energy dense (9 calories a gram) and so if your body feels like it is starving it is unlikely to give up its densest energy source. It is more likely to give up the tissue that is using up energy. Muscle is metabolically active, it needs energy just to exist. If you get rid of some of the muscle then your body can conserve even more energy on the limited number of calories you are giving it. If you choose to eat too few calories you will lose weight (note I say 'weight' not 'fat') eventually you will suffer from a depressed metabolism and the weight loss will halt. Your body will seek to hold onto its stash of energy and rid itself of the muscle tissue that has its own energy requirement.

At some point the dieter either reaches their desired weight or they have become very disheartened (and just plain hungry), they may relax their calorie restriction a little or they may quit altogether. At this point they have a slower metabolism than before the onset of the diet and they have less muscle. Before they started reducing their calories they may have had a basal metabolic rate of 1800 calories a day, since then they have lost muscle and now their BMR might only be 1500. By simply returning to their normal way of eating they are going to gain weight just because their daily energy requirement has been reduced.