Why would being on a diet have exactly the opposite effect that you intended and what are the alternatives? If you have struggled with your weight for a long period of time you do not need a long term study of over thirty separate studies to tell you that diets make you fat. The fact that you are on a diet or have been on a diet is an indicator of your weight GAIN not loss. However there is such a study which proves exactly that. What it does not explain is why this happens and why its not your fault. It’s the fault of the diet, not just the diet you are on but any diet. A diet will force you to gain weight over a period of time just as the evidence suggests.

Let me explain why

In 1987 a team of psychologists lead by professor Wenger set out to conduct what they call the “White Bear” experiments and got some unexpected and surprising results. They wanted to find out more about resisting thoughts. That is the situation we all find ourselves in when we do not want to think about something and yet we think about it more and more. In the experiment they used the white bear and you have just performed part of it. If you are thinking of a white bear at the moment then please stop! If you like you can stop reading for a while and not think of a white bear during that time.

Of course you cannot push a thought from your mind because you have to think about it first so you know what not to think about. After confirming this fact the scientists went further by using three groups. Group A who were free to think of white bears before the experiment, group B who were told not to and group C who were given no instruction. The result was astounding and is the beginning of broader implications for dieting. The groups who were allowed to think of white bears or given no instruction were much more successful of withholding the thoughts when asked to later. The group who were restricted from thinking of white bears were not only least successful but seemed to be victims of what they call the rebound effect. This meant that they experienced not just small lapses in thought but catastrophic avalanche of thought. Its not just in dieting terms that this starts to sound familiar when we have restricted ourselves and done so well only to relapse not just in a small way but in a huge binge. Have you ever tried to give up smoking, drinking or get to sleep whilst pushing away a recurring thought?

More concerning is the fact that the scientists involved suggest that outside a laboratory condition this could be magnified many times and they suggest this could lead to obsession. We would create an obsession with the very thing we wanted to avoid. Be that food, alcohol or cigarettes or even worse trying to get over a relationship, think stalker here. People who started out as purely rational who do things as a result of a developed obsession.

So our diets ask us to focus on calories and weight which are the very things we want to avoid and we develop an obsession resulting in a relapse, a huge binge, then back to the beginning only to start the cycle all over again. This cycle is probably very familiar to you except for the fact that you may have thought it was just that you were weak or did not have self-control when in fact the opposite is true. So what now? Thankfully there is a way of breaking this cycle and we will discuss that in my next article.

Michael Dawson is the author of \”12 Fat Ladies – How to get off diets and stay off diets, forever\” Utilising theraputic models that have helped millions of people from all walks of life he is skilled in NLP,Solution Focused Therapy and Clinical Hypnosis. 12 fat ladies website

Michael Dawson is the author of \”12 Fat Ladies – How to get off diets and stay off diets, forever\” Utilising theraputic models that have helped millions of people from all walks of life he is skilled in NLP,Solution Focused Therapy and Clinical Hypnosis. http://www.12fatladies.com

Author Bio: Michael Dawson is the author of \”12 Fat Ladies – How to get off diets and stay off diets, forever\” Utilising theraputic models that have helped millions of people from all walks of life he is skilled in NLP,Solution Focused Therapy and Clinical Hypnosis. 12 fat ladies website

Category: Wellness, Fitness and Diet
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