First we need to understand what the terms diet and dieting mean before I state my side of the argument.

Diet – the kinds of food that a person, animal, or community habitually eats.

Dieting – restricting oneself to certain amounts or special kinds of food in order to lose weight.

The general public often tries to demonize dieting using one common theme. It goes something along the lines of: “X% of people gain the lost weight back within Y weeks of completing a diet”. In these scenarios X is usually an astonishing large % and Y is a very short period of time. The problem with analyses like these is not that they’re incorrect, it’s that the general public often doesn’t understand the WHY, and it deters some people from even making the initial attempt towards self improvement.

If you or someone you know is overweight to the point where your/their health is at risk, or you/they just have the goal to improve your/their body composition the question should not be: to diet or not to diet (with an end date in mind)? It should be which diet can I adopt and make a part of my life, for the rest of my life. The truth is that pretty much all diets work, but they stop working at the same moment YOU do.

Once you reach your goals, the way you’ve been dieting needs to remain your diet, and that is the only way to maintain or continue to make progress. Do your research and ask questions, be realistic and choose the diet that suits your lifestyle, NOT the diet that requires you to drastically and unrealistically change your lifestyle.