The Reason Diets Fail You
This year millions of different folks will embark upon a vitamin and so much will fail to lose weight. The usual reaction to this failure by the other folks marketing the nutrition is to blame the person for the failure. This leaves the person feeling defeated and guilty because of their lack of "will-power"
Blaming the individual also preserves the illusion that diets are an effective way to lose weight. I think it is time to move the discussion beyond this "blaming" level and explore the actual reasons diets fail.
I will use an example to explain my position.
When so much people are presented with one factor like a chocolate (candy) bar it is not long before they really really feel a want to eat the thing. Most will simply blame the chocolate for causing the need. They will then try to battle the yearning with "will-power". Usually they lose this battle and sooner or later supply in and eat the chocolate bar. This "giving-in" often marks the end of the vitamin.
Now lets look at why this "giving-in" occurred. We know that the cognitive procedure that brought about the yearning to eat the chocolate bar went something like this; sensory input was received through the appropriate receptors [mainly eyes in this case] and the thoughts formed a few type of neural or sensory representation of the item that will be defined as a chocolate bar. We can regard this procedure as inescapable. If the sensory receptors are in working order, the thoughts must shape a representation or neural symbol of the object.
When a neural symbol has been shaped we have been taught to assign meanings, from memory, to those images as they occur in the mind. The project of which approach is followed by an emotional reaction appropriate to the which means assigned. In the case of the chocolate bar the which means assigned included past memories of pleasant experiences assosciated with eating chocolate bars, hence the craving to eat this chocolate bar. So really it was not the presence of the object that will be defined as a chocolate bar that brought about the craving, but the cognitive process outlined.
Specifically it was the assignment of that means that caused the craving. And because this assignment of meaning has become totally computerized in most people, the chocolate bar gets the blame for the craving while in fact it only had the energy to result in the mind to shape a meaningless symbol. For most, the meaning and image have become "fused", with the meaning now seen as an inherent part of the neural image itself rather than something assigned from within the mind. This of course gives the stimulus the energy to be the lead to of the response.
Just thinking about or reflecting upon a chocolate bar has the same effect. A neural image is shaped from that reflection and when it has been formed the cognitive process of routinely assigning meaning to it is exactly the same as with pictures caused by an external stimulii. We feel a strong desire to eat the chocolate bar.
This all means of course that every time we are presented with a chocolate bar or a few other desirable food, the mind automatically performs the cognitive process outlined and creates a desire to eat the delicacy. These continual emotional responses build up and eventually wear us down. This is the reason we "give-in" and the diet goes out the window.
My point is then, the only way to reduce our food intake and still feel comfortable is to modify this process of automatically assigning meaning to the images that come into our heads. This way we can reduce the desire to eat unnecessarily and thereby modify our eating behaviour so that we lose weight and keep it off.
Diets do not supply these techniques and in actual fact they fail the individual not the other way round as their providers would have you believe. If changing our behaviour was easy as making a decision to go on a diet, most of us would have changed many things about ourselves long ago. The truth is we need techniques that will help us to bring that change about or we are setting ourselves up to fail.
R.J.
2006
