So, we’re now four days into the New Year and I wonder how many have already ditched their New Year’s Resolutions. I wonder how many women embarked on yet another attempt at a diet when the clock struck 12 on January 1st.

Ladies, diets just don’t work. They don’t. I love what Josie Spinardi says in her book, Thin Side Out, about it being scientifically proven that diets have a 99.5% rate of failure. She goes on to put this into perspective:

We would never rely on something with such dismal credentials in other areas of our lives. Let’s look at this objectively. If an airline had the same track record, would you fly with them? Seriously. Out of every 200 departing flights, one of them lands safely? The other 199 crash and burn? Really? You can’t tell me that you’d even consider flying that airline. And, if by some momentary lapse in judgement, you did fly with them and mid-flight the plane’s engine cut out – would you then turn around and blame yourself for the malfunction?

Um, yeah, I wouldn’t fly with them… and neither would you. And yet, women keep looking for that next diet that will fix it all. Well, I think it’s time we all stop drinking the kool-aid. Set down your glass and declare:

“Hi, my name is Jules and I’m a diet-aholic.”

Well, I’m a recovering diet-aholic now. Just think about that for a second. Let it sink in. It’s time we admit that what we’re really addicted to is dieting. It’s not good for us and yet we crave it. We crave the structure. We crave the excitement of starting a new diet… you know, that renewed “hope” that this time will be different. We crave the attention we get when a few pounds come off. We crave the downward motion of the scale. We crave the feeling of “being in control”. We’re addicted, and unfortunately, for the majority of the dieters out there, the rebound will be inevitable. Geneen Roth is absolutely right when she says that every diet has an opposing binge. If only 0.5% of the people who embark on a diet find long-term weight loss, the odds are pretty darn good that you are going to find yourself hunkered over a bowl of something (and soon), frantically shoveling it in while muttering, “my love, my love, my precious.”

So, how do we break free of the diet craze? We stop listening to it. Stop going to diet related forums and sites. Remove your diet apps. Throw out your diet books. Tell your dieting friends that you just can’t talk diet with them anymore. Fast forward through the Weight Watcher, Nutrisystem, and weight-loss pill commercials. Delete the diet emails, and turn off the “lose ten pounds by 5pm with this device” infomercials.

And then, because you’ve been indoctrinated to believe diets are the answer, you’ll need to tell your own brain to shut up a few hundred times a day for a bit. Are you still wondering if the next diet is the answer? Are you still thinking you can trust diets but not yourself? Why don’t you do a diet inventory. Sit down with a piece of paper and pen. Then draw out a timeline of every diet you’ve ever been on. Write how long you did it, how much weight you lost… and then don’t forget how much weight you re-gained before you started the next diet (or repeated one you’d already tried). If you don’t see a pattern, well, you’re probably not ready to admit you’re a diet-aholic. But, if you see what I see when I take that walk through my “hall of diets past”, you’ll realize that dieting doesn’t work. You’ll accept that continuing on that path is the very definition of insane (continuing to do the same thing while expecting different results).

You’re not insane, you’re just addicted. Let’s just “take the red pill” already and break free of the diet matrix 🙂