Title: No, 95 Percent of People Don’t Fail Their Diets | Eat + Run | US News
Headings: No, 95 Percent of People Don’t Fail Their Diets
No, 95 Percent of People Don’t Fail Their Diets
Content: No, 95 Percent of People Don’t Fail Their Diets | Eat + Run | US News
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No, 95 Percent of People Don’t Fail Their Diets
Dieting is often synonymous with suffering, so consider the reverse: 95 percent of diets fail people.<br>
By Yoni Freedhoff
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Nov. 17, 2014
By Yoni Freedhoff
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Nov. 17, 2014, at 10:17 a.m.
No, 95 Percent of People Don’t Fail Their Diets
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I’m sure you’ve heard that stat bandied about – I even included a version of it in my book " The Diet Fix ," but where my book and I diverge from the general zeitgeist on dieting failure is that I don’t think 95 percent of people fail diets. I believe that 95 percent of diets fail people. As far as the source of that 95 percent statistic, the medical literature isn’t much help. While there have been a few small studies showing dramatic regain rates in line with the 95 percent mark, that number really doesn’t have an identifiable and conclusive origin. But even if it had, even if there were some massive meta-analysis that analyzed the weight regain rates of huge numbers of weight loss studies, I still wouldn’t believe it, because lumping together huge numbers of studies involving crappy, non-personalized diets would really only illuminate the rather obvious fact that crappy, non-personalized diets aren’t sustainable. For at least the past 100 years (and likely many more), dieting has been synonymous with suffering. It’s been “die” with a “t,” where adherents to diets have been instructed to either suffer through hunger and cultivate the skill of white-knuckled willpower, or to consider food to simply be fuel and deny themselves either the dietary indulgences they love the most or eliminate entire food groups. But food isn’t just fuel. As each and every one of us knows, food truly is comfort – it actually has a direct effect on our bodies’ stress hormone levels.