How many diets have you been on in your lifetime? Did you know the average woman spends 17 years on a diet? Diets. Don’t. Work. Full stop. I could end this post there, but dive into it if you want to know the exact reasons WHY diets fail - over and over again. And why you keep yoyo dieting, over and over again.

Let’s remember that your body doesn’t care about your weight loss goals. Your body’s main job is to keep you alive, it doesn’t care whether you want to be a size 10 or drop 10kg.

Biologically, all your body cares about is having enough energy to function and it uses your fat cells to store excess energy when supply is low.

Most people are unlikely to experience a genuine low supply of food, except when you go on a restrictive diet, our body suddenly experiences a short supply and doesn’t know the difference.  Are you actually about to starve, or are you just restricting yourself on the latest celebrity diet?

 Let’s dive into our body’s response to dieting – the science behind why diets don’t work.

#1 Your brain is programmed to notice food when you restrict it

Researchers have shown that the part of the brain called the hypothalamus has an increase in responsiveness when you see food. This explains why you seem to notice food everywhere when you’re on a diet. It’s your brain’s way of showing you that there IS actually food around and no need for the famine.

#2 Your hormones go haywire

When your body thinks it’s being starved, your hormones get into the action: increasing your appetite and the threshold of where you will feel full – basically you have to eat MORE to feel satisfied.

There’s lots of hormones involved when you eat – two of them are leptin and ghrelin. Leptin makes you feel hungry and grehlin makes you feel full.

When there’s a food shortage, your body increases the hormone leptin so you feel more hungry – your body’s way of telling you to go and find food NOW!

At the same time, your body stops producing so much of the fullness hormones including ghrelin which normally tells your body to stop eating. It’s your body’s way of telling you to carry on eating once you start… so you can save some excess energy for when there’s another famine (or in reality you’re on another diet).

In fact, your hormones can still be haywire a whole year after you finish the diet!

#3 Your body burns muscle tissue for energy

OK, most people go on a diet and want to increase muscle mass and reduce their fat – am I right?

What can actually happen when food is in short supply, is that you start to burn your muscle tissue for energy and actually your body tries to store MORE fat.

It starts to burn muscle because your muscle tissues use a lot of energy so your body is actively trying to reduce the amount of energy used overall (because it sees it in short supply without food being around).

In the same way, you will try and store fat so there’s an energy store – again, thinking ahead in case there is a shortage of food.

#4 Your metabolism slows down.

Your body does this to conserve energy.  Metabolism is the process that your body uses to convert what you eat and drink into energy for your body to function – keeping you alive and your organs functioning.

Studies have shown that when you lose weight, your metabolism slows down because it thinks it is preparing for famine!

This is the huge irony – your body’s survival mechanism means that in times of what it sees to be famine (ie. a diet) a slower metabolism combined with less muscle mass makes it easier for your body to put on fat afterwards.

This ultimately means it’s really easy to go back to your pre-diet weight and in some instances put on weight because your metabolism is slower!

So, to summarise then, dieting and calorie restriction can actually backfire because of your body’s survival mechanisms!  Meaning that in the long term you are doing more harm than good when you diet.

Any AHA moments after hearing about your body’s response to dieting? I would love it if you would share it in the comments below.

If you want to learn how to improve your health mindset, then download my FREE guide – 5 mindset shifts to break free from dieting and love your body.