Why Do People Fail to Successfully Lose Weight?

7:10 AM    



Estimates place the percentage of dieters that fail in their objective at 80-95%. By failing, it means that either they do not lose weight at all, or they gain weight instead of shedding off. Surveys have revealed that of those who have undergone dietary programs, only one percent lose weight and do not gain it back. This is a very important subject matter because obesity research is very relevant today. Obesity is a growing problem in the United States in particular, and health and nutrition experts are working non-stop in determining factors that influence the increased prevalence.
The biggest losers
There are many diet and meal plans being offered today. The general observation is that of these programs, the biggest failures are those that involve radical changes in a person's eating habits. For instance, diets that replace regular meals with fruit juice, cereal bars, or milkshakes seemed ended up with people failing miserably in the long term. Similarly, programs that are overly strict in the daily caloric intake of dieters resulted in more failures than successes.
The meltdown resulting from these diets and their inability to promote long-term weight loss are often attributed to the lack of an effective method to re-educate the dieter on their eating habits. After the program's implementation, most dieters just go back to the way they were. They only realize that these old eating habits have caused the increase in weight that motivated them to undergo a dietary program in the first place.
Why people fail to keep the weight off
Perhaps we need to focus on the factors that influence the non fulfillment of the objective to maintain weight loss. Long-term success is largely dependent on a combination of two factors. These are food intake and physical activity. Poor success rates are associated with the inability of the person to monitor daily food intake as well as the lack of physical activity on a daily basis. Meanwhile, studies show that people who succeeded in maintaining a weight loss ranging from 30 lbs. to 60 lbs. for a year at the least managed to do so by changing their lifestyle, engaging in a regular exercise program and monitoring their meal servings and frequency of food intake.
Many clinical studies performed with obese persons support the validity of the positive effect of behavior modification in weight loss. Binge eating is one of the problems associated with obesity and the failure to keep the lost weight off amongst dieters. Binge eating is in turn associated with certain pervasive psychological issues.
There are diets that work, but there are also diets that seem to do more harm than good. Nevertheless, the outcome of a program is wholly dependent on the choices that the dieter makes. Some diet plans have innate virtues that increase chances of success. However, even the most highly regarded programs can fail in the long term if the person fails to recognize the need to leave behind habits and behaviors that favor weight gain over weight loss.