How much weight do you want to lose?
So you’ve started a new diet. Good for you and congratulations on wanting to improve your health! Have you set a weight loss goal yet? Is it realistic? And by realistic I mean try to ignore all the hype you see on the internet. You know what I’m talking about. The hype that promises you can:
Lose 18 pounds in 8 days
Lose 20 pounds in 3 weeks
Lose 42 pounds in 3 months
Sure it sounds cool, but how realistic is it? In an effort to find out the truth, I decided to do some REAL research and see how much weight you can realistically expect to lose.
I came across an interesting study that compared 4 major diets over a 1 year period. That sounded perfect. After all, if you could lose 18 pounds in 8 days, just think how much you can lose in a year. In case you were wondering, that would be more than 821 pounds.
What were the results of the study?
The average person lost almost 7 pounds. That’s a little over ½ pound per month. The winner was the Atkins diet (low carb) with almost 10 lbs.
After 6 months, all groups in the study began to regain some of the weight they had lost.
Goal 7 pounds? That’s all?
When I examined the data a little more closely, I found that by the end of the year, all of the participants had reduced their calorie intake by more than 300 calories a day. It may not sound like a lot, but if one pound equals 3,500 calories, that means they should have lost more than 31 pounds.
Good? So what gives? Were the numbers wrong?
Greg Easterbrook once said:
“They torture numbers and confess anything”
I could not agree more.
Here’s an example to explain what I’m talking about:
Put 2 people on a diet. If 1 loses 50 pounds, but the other gains 10, there are many ways to analyze the results:
Optimistic: Diet is great, 1 person lost 50 pounds
Pessimist: The diet is a failure, 1 person gained 10 pounds
Realistic: the diet works, the average weight loss was 20 pounds per person
Are any of the above statements false? No. And that’s the point.
The issue I’m having with the integer issue is based on the above sample of 2 people, what ad do you think they’ll use when trying to sell their product? That’s how it is.
Lose over 50 pounds!
Misleading? Of course it is, but I think it’s also dangerous. Even if you don’t buy the product, you are informed about results that you may not be able to achieve. So when you go on a diet and lose only 4 pounds in a month, what do you think?
Would you consider yourself successful? Or would you give up and try something else?
That’s the problem with numbers. When used incorrectly, they cause us to develop high expectations that are almost impossible to meet.
If you are on a diet, how much weight do you want to lose in a month to feel good?
Sometimes it is necessary to ask better questions BEFORE asking the ‘weight question’.
Seeing a dietitian or weight loss coach can help you understand why you are at your current weight. They can help you eliminate some bad habits and even worse thought patterns. Good weight loss coaches can help you identify the emotional ties you have to food and show you how you can release those ties for good.
Once you’ve released those emotional ties, almost any healthy diet will work to get you to a healthy weight.
