Dieting makes you gain a lot of fat

As someone who writes about food and health, I sometimes ask about the modern equivalent of the health crisis caused by smoking. What are we doing now that we will look back in horror, asking ourselves 'how did we not see harm'?

My answer is diet. I think in 50 years our grandchildren will ask why we thought short-term starvation was an effective way to permanently change your weight. They might also ask us how we became so obsessed with making the amazing variety of human bodies exactly the same shape and size.

Almost half of us will try a weight loss diet. Studies show that most dieters will eventually regain any lost kilos, with most ending up heavier than before. Long-term behavioral studies have shown that dieting is one of the strongest indicators of future weight gain. Work on twins suggests that this effect may be causal. Ironically, our obsession with reducing fat causes us to get bigger.

Although the media would have us believe in the erratic ability of the human figure, body fatness is rarely under our control. Time and time again our genes have proven to be one of the most powerful predictors of how much we weigh, and when food is freely available, weight is one of the most studied inherited characteristics ever, in the same ballpark as height. There are many physiological systems that contribute to this. For example, leptin is a substance produced by our adipose tissue, and when we lose weight, the level of this powerful hormone begins to decrease. This points to primitive parts of the brain, which force us to eat more. Although longer schedules give us the illusion of control, our desire to eat is very similar to our need to breathe. We can control it for days, weeks, or maybe months. But in the end, hunger will win.

To make matters worse, hormones can bring down our metabolic rate in response to a lack of food, shutting down nonessential functions of keeping calories. These regimens developed long before the famous diet gurus, and the difference between the latest diet and life-threatening starvation cannot be known. Maintaining these calories is likely to cause lethargy, mood disturbances, and decreased immune function.

These rounds of death can cause psychological damage, as unsuccessful diets are tossed as failures in a world that puts thinness and fit as the ultimate goal. Instead of going down a fleeting path to failure, it may be better to think about what might improve our health, other than losing weight. Exercising, eating quality food, stopping smoking, improving sleep and reducing stress all have the power to make us happier and healthier. But in a fat-obsessed society, such things are often thrown aside as trifles if they don't cause you to shed weight.

Fat is seen as the only problem, with countless sufferers lining up to sell their goods. All the nutritionists claim to have the only real solution, and they promise to finally fix our diseased bodies. But maybe the real problem isn't that we haven't found the right diet yet. Perhaps it is simply our refusal to accept that temporary starvation is not just an effective way to improve our health.