Seems to me that most times, people who start a diet have been steadily gaining weight for some years. Say you gain some pounds all the time. If you diet and lose some weight, and then six months later you are back to that weight, haven’t you just spared yourself your normal six months gain? So the diet did work, by making your weight average out to stable for six months.
Did I do the math right?
If, indeed, you would have gained weight in the interim instead, your “diet” has saved you some weight gain.
Most people, however, do not just gain weight over time. What they tend to do is level off at some overweight amount of pounds. Gradually, over time, there might be periods where they manage even greater weight gain, but in general, it’s a matter of having a steady weight at too high a reading on the scale.
In that case, if the weight is lost and regained, the “diet” failed to do what it needed to do, which was change your eating habits.
In addition to what DSYoungEsq said, also keep in mind that many people, when they regain weight after dieting, gain more weight than they initially lost. And it doesn’t happen because of any fault of the diet necessarily (though there are plenty of unhealthy fad diets out there). It’s because the person didn’t change their eating habits, but lost weight then expected to be able to eat the way they were eating when they were overweight again.
Huh?
The question is: If you are still on the diet, why did you regain your original weight after 6 months? You lose weight during the period in which you’re on the diet. Then, if you return to your usual eating habits, you regain the weight that you had lost (and usually then some).
The diet works during the period that you’re on it. If you go off the diet, it stops working. There is NO diet that will keep your weight off when you’re no longer on it.
Hmm…guess I misread the OP then. I thought that “then they went off the diet” was implied, but maybe I was wrong.
If someone is really, truly sticking to a healthy weight-loss diet, then they should continue to lose weight. Sure, most people plateau for a bit at some point, but they’re being honest about sticking to it, then they shouldn’t gain all the weight back.
Yes, that is the premise. Nobody stays on a diet and regains the weight. Mathematically impossible.
Your original premise is largely incorrect - most people stabilize at some high weight. In my experience, if I go on a diet and lost a bunch of weight and then gain it back and restabilize the new high weight is actually higher than the old high weight, rendering the diet not only useless but damaging. Which doesn’t stop me from trying, but does make my life increasingly miserable as I do. Most recently, I lost 80lbs and a year and a half and in the year and a half since then have gained 86lbs.
Actually, it is quite possible. This is the result of reduction in calories used, i.e., reduced activity.
You are ALWAYS on a “diet.” Your diet is the sum total of what you eat. What we call a “diet” is actually better-termed a “weight reduction diet.” Still, you could, for example, go on a particular diet that assumes a certain increased activity level concurrent with the diet. You stay on the diet, but you drop the increased activity. Your weight in that case can go up, even though the eating habits haven’t changed at all.