It’s estimated that about 96 per cent of people will regain the weight they lose a diet within two years.
With the odds against us, there might be a better way to drop the kilos and keep it off for good.
According to Sydney-based dietitian, Lyndi Cohen, the solution to long-term weight management is not dieting at all.
‘As the name suggests, a non-diet approach is about letting go of dieting behaviours like calorie counting, restrictive eating and food rules,’ she says.
FEMAIL spoke to Sydney-based dietitian, Lyndi Cohen (pictured), to find out about the non-diet approach
‘The majority of people who go on a diet will end up gaining more weight than they lose.
‘Diets aren’t helping people lose weight and keep it off’
Ms Cohen, who dieted for a decade, says this is because people become more tempted and have more cravings when they restrict what they eat.
‘The forbidden foods become more powerful and as soon as your motivation dwindles, you end up eating all the food you’re not allowed, often in bigger quantities than before.
‘I started dieting at a normal weight, trying to be slim but years of diets had made me gain weight until I was categorically obese.
‘I started dieting at a normal weight, trying to be slim but years of diets had made me gain weight until I was categorically obese,’ said Ms Cohen
‘Dieting can often ruins your relationship with food making it harder to eating healthily without binge eating, emotional eating and feelings of guilt.’
The non-diet approach is all about teaching people how to naturally identify appetite cues instead of restricting foods and feeling hungry.
‘Naturally, once you stop trying to control everything you eat, you often find that you naturally want to eat healthily.
Ms Cohen says once she stopped obsessing over food and ‘trying to be good’ she lost 20 kilograms
‘There is growing research that the non-diet approach helps people be healthier resulting in increased self-acceptance, better cholesterol levels, healthier blood pressure and positive outcomes for people with diabetes,’ she explains.
‘Unlike diets, these results are more permanent showing that a non-diet approach is in fact healthier in the long term than dieting.
Ms Cohen says once she stopped obsessing over food she lost 20 kilograms.
‘The problem with dieting is that when you fail a diet, you end up blaming yourself (and your willpower) instead of blaming the diet – so you never realise just how damaging diets are for your health.
‘I’m so much happier and healthier since I adopted a non-diet approach.’
For more information about Lyndi Cohen’s Keep It Real program, please click here.