Why You Can’t “Hack” Your Way to Weight Loss

I went on a fair few crash diets as a young lass. If you want to know what I’m like when I’m cranky, talk to me after I’ve subsisted exclusively on lemon water and sadness for a week.  

If you’re not familiar with the term, a crash diet is an extremely restrictive form of eating that often yields rapid results (but at great cost). These diets can appear under the guise of a short-term “cleanse” or “detox,” but are sometimes intended to be sustained for longer periods of time. 

Crash diets are not only risky to your health, but because of their unsustainability, you often end up gaining back every pound you lost. Or worse, you find yourself back at square one, feeling frustrated and guilty for “failing.”

Inherent risks aside, the undeniable appeal of a crash diet is that you can rush to achieve the fastest possible results without bothering to think about anything beyond immediate gratification.

The problem is, you’re not actually getting ahead. 

By attempting to reach your goal sooner, you’re actually getting there slower because at best, you’re creating major obstacles for yourself, and at worst, you’ll need to start over (perhaps many times).

Rushing into anything almost always guarantees failure.

Measured deliberateness almost always guarantees success.

When you dive in too quickly, hoping for the fastest possible results, you can also look forward to burning out quickly, hitting walls, or having setbacks. These setbacks can take the form of disordered eating behaviors like emotional eating, villainizing foods, or overexercising to compensate for overeating—not only disrupting your weight loss progress, but your relationship with food, too.

In the realm of weight loss, it’s not just crash diets that can set you back. Even a regular diet—including those that claim to be a “lifestyle”—can backfire, encouraging unsustainable habits and fueling disordered eating behaviors.

I’ve seen “regular” diets, from counting points to counting macros, have an even worse effect than crash diets on people’s habits—and their self-esteem—precisely because they seem so reasonable. 

“Why can’t I stick to this??” the dieter wonders, growing increasingly frustrated with themself, feeling more and more hopeless about their body and their relationship with food. “I know what to do…why can’t I make myself do it? What’s wrong with me?”

So…

What ARE you to do when years or even decades of diets and crash diets haven’t worked? When you can’t figure out how to get yourself to do what you want?

Do the opposite. Seek out longevity. Take the slow road.

Rather than focusing on WHAT you’re eating, examine and heal your relationship with food. Find out WHY you’re eating what you’re eating. Why do you choose the foods you do? Why do you overeat? Why do you emotionally eat? Why do you feel guilty when you eat certain foods?

These questions are not intended to make you feel bad—rather, they’re just the beginning of the questions our Food Body Self students learn the answers to when they engage in coaching with us. Because if you don’t understand the “why” behind your behavior, you’ll never be able to act differently.

Once you understand why you do what you do—and how to get yourself to do what you intend—only then will you be able to achieve the consistency necessary to hit your goals.

That’s why I describe Food Body Self coaching not as a weight loss program, but as a process for examining and healing your relationship with food, and as a prerequisite to losing weight, especially if you’ve developed unhealthy behaviors around eating.

It can feel frustrating at first to put your weight loss desires aside at first, but the best results you’ll ever get—in anything—come from sustained practice over years, NOT from quick fixes or rushed progress.

If you’re truly committed to succeeding and know what you’re working on is something you want to be involved in for years to come…there’s no rush.

This article was originally published on January 18, 2019 and was revised on January 10, 2022.