So you’re not alone. 
We actually don’t have an evidence-based way to safely, reliably, and sustainably produce weight loss for most people.
We’re taught that when we go on a diet and lose weight, and then gain the weight back, that it’s our fault.
And so naturally, we blame ourselves.
But how many diets have you been on?
And how many times has the weight come back?
And sometimes even more.
If you’re like most dieters it’s every single time and trust me, you are all not failures.
I promise.
This happens because your brain has a sense of what it thinks you should weigh, regardless of what you consciously believe or what diet culture says is normal.
It’s called your set point weight range, and it’s a range of 10 to 15 pounds.
You can use lifestyle habits to move up and down within that range, but it’s much harder to get outside of that range.
Have you ever noticed, how you initially lose weight when you’re on a diet, but then it gets harder and harder?
This likely explains why.
When you lose weight, below your body’s predetermined range, it responds by trying to make you gain the weight back.
It makes you hungrier. It makes food more rewarding in the brain. It slows your metabolism and it decreases the energy your muscles burn.
No matter your size, your body responds to dieting, as if it were starving. And from an evolutionary perspective, this makes a lot of sense.
When food was scarce, our ancestors’ survival depended on the body’s ability to conserve energy.
And regaining weigh when food became available protected against the next food shortage.
And for most of human history, starvation has been a much greater threat to our survival than overeating. And so this explains why set points go up, but very rarely ever are observed to go down.
What this means is your body’s response to weight loss attempts might be to increase your set point and this is likely why your weight continues to go up.
And we actually have a lot of research to support this.
In Dr. Sandra Aamodt‘s book, “Why Diets Make us Fat,” she found that when teenage girls went on diets, they were three times more likely to be overweight five years later than the girls who didn’t diet at all.
She also found that five years after dieting, most people gain the weight back, forty percent gained even more. So what this means is the most likely outcome of going on a diet is that you’re going to gain weight and be even heavier in the long run than if you didn’t diet at all.
Here’s the sad fact: if you continue to diet, you’re more likely to keep gaining weight over time, but this is not your fault.
Your body is literally doing what it’s been designed to do which is to keep you alive.
Sadly we have all been lied to by diet culture.
Just to sell us pills and products and surgeries and plans and all these things that don’t work and just keep us coming back for more.
So you’re better off cutting your losses now. And instead of chasing intentional weight loss, work to heal your relationship with food and your body and take a weight neutral approach to health so that your weight can stabilize within its set point range.
Lastly, I understand how devastating and heartbreaking this might be to hear. So please be compassionate on yourself.
Give yourself the space to grieve the thin dream and hopefully get mad at diet culture, instead of yourself and your body, which is only ever had your back.
Diet culture is the failure. Not you.