Every January is filled with talk of New Year’s resolutions and with the promise of a “new year, new me”. One of the most common New Year’s resolutions is to lose weight, get fit, or start eating healthier. It is great that people are trying to self-improve, but sadly, many are going about it in completely the wrong way. Although dieting is one of the most popular weight loss mechanisms, they often cause more harm than good, and the majority of the time they do not work.

David Zinczenko, author of Eat It To Beat It!, puts it perfectly. “Don’t diet! It’s just a four-letter word. You’ll quickly lose muscle and water, then when you fall off the wagon, you’ll gain back that weight as fat, not metabolism-boosting muscle. When you fall off the wagon after a restrictive diet doesn’t work out, you’ll actually be worse off than you started.”

Teenage girls need 1,800 to 2,400 calories a day to grow, function properly, and ultimately survive. Any diet in which a person is eating fewer calories than that is not healthy; it is dangerous. You are starving yourself, and crossing the fine line between a diet and an eating disorder.

Many people that struggle with their weight are probably familiar with the Yo-Yo cycle, where your weight fluctuates throughout certain periods. Perhaps you reach your goal weight, but before long, you are right back where you started. Blame it on the diets. According to research, a dieter will try an average of four diets a year.

“Repeated crash dieting increases metabolic hormones, such as insulin, and elevates levels of sex hormones, including estrogen,” says Andrea Pennington, MD, author of The Pennington Plan for Weight Success. “These changes cause you to start putting on weight around your middle, which research has linked to insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease.”

While you may think that diets are helping you, they are hurting you in the long run. Here are the worlds most popular diets, and why they are doing more harm than good.

Diets that focus on a few foods or food groups

Examples: Strict vegan diets, raw food diets, low-carb diets, fat-free diets, etc.

Why they don’t work: People need a variety of nutrients and foods to get all of the nutrients they need. By cutting out certain food groups, you are missing those nutrients. As an example, I will focus on fat-free diets. Everyone needs fat. Fat should account for 30% of a person’s daily caloric intake. Without this, the body cannot function. Another example is Steve Job’s all fruit diet. This diet did not end well for him. He died from pancreatic cancer due to too much sugar in the fruit.

Detox Diets

Examples: Master Cleanse, Juice Cleanses, etc.

Why they don’t work: Did you know that the idea for detox diets came from the extreme regimens used by patients before procedures such as liver flushes, colonics, and hormone injections? It is not natural for people to flush out their bodies. Besides damaging your stomach and intestines, detox diets are complete nonsense. You have a liver, kidneys, and an immune system that do an excellent job of ridding your body of toxins.

Diets with “miracle” foods/ingredients

Examples: Green tea diet, supplements, fructose water diet

Why they don’t work: Newsflash! There is no one food that has an impact on weight loss. The rest is self explanatory.

Fasting/Low Calorie Diets

Examples: “Model Diet,” any diet that you consume less calories than you need to survive.

Why they don’t work: Consuming too few calories puts your body into starvation mode, and adjusts your metabolism. When you go back to eating normally once your diet ends, your metabolism will not go back. Therefore, you will be eating WAY more calories than you need. Usually, starvation diets come with the promises along the lines of “lose 5, 10, 15 pounds per week!” According to various sources, diets promising losses of more than ½ pound a week are unrealistic. What happens when you come out of starvation mode (because obviously you can’t survive on it)? You gain all the weight, and sometimes even more, back. Weight loss is a combination of fat, fluid, and muscle loss. However, the pounds regained are all fat. Good luck with that.

Diets where companies send you food

Examples: Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem

Why they don’t work: Do you know what ingredients are in the foods they send you? It is all processed and un-natural. There is nothing healthy that comes with these diets. Also, do you really want to eat freeze-dried “vegetables” or “meat” that you need to microwave? Gross. What happens when you go out to eat? Or when you run out of the food they send you? You can’t stay on these diets for your whole life. You need to learn to cook your own healthy food. Also, processed ingredients are one of the worst things for overall health, which is exactly what Jenny Craig and Nutrisystem foods are made, not to mention they are made in a factory.

To put it simply, diets do not work. The only way to really lose weight and keep it off, and remain healthy, is to eat real food from all the food groups in moderation. Not to mention that exercise is just as important. If you are really serious about losing weight, put down the diet books, click out of the websites, and try researching “healthy ways to lose weight without dieting”. Being healthy should become a lifestyle, not something you try for a few weeks at a time. Good luck!