“For a lot of people, the idea that a diet is something to go on and then off is wrong-headed to begin with,” said Julie Miller Jones a professor of nutrition and food science at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minn.. Instead of “diet,” she suggested, substitute the word “eating plan.” And determine that you will stick with it for life. “Unless [overweight] people get their head around this idea, that this is something you do for a lifetime, not six weeks or six months, they are doomed to failure,” Miller Jones said.

Even worse, constant dieting, especially with severe calorie restriction, makes it harder to lose weight the next time, Miller Jones said. No one’s disputing that excess body weight isn’t a problem in the United States.

According to the National Center for Health Statistics, about 64 percent of adults age 20 and older are overweight or obese, as are 15 percent of children and teens ages 6 to 19. Even so, dieting, particularly in adolescence, can be counterproductive, experts said. One expert, Joanne Ikeda, found that out when she surveyed adult women about their dieting habits in a study published in 2004 in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association. She asked 149 obese women if they had dieted and if so, how many times and when.

“We were able to use statistics and compare with women who had not gotten that large,” she said.

The result: The higher a woman’s body mass index, or BMI, the more likely she was to have started her first weight-loss diet before age 13, said Ikeda, the founding director of the University of California Berkeley’s Center for Weight and Health. Even worse, she added, “there have been some very large-scale studies coming out of Scandinavia showing that [repeated] weight loss [and regain] actually increases the risk for weight gain.” Often called “yo-yo dieting,” this pattern is definitely harmful, Ikeda said.

“I tell people if they have lost weight and regained it three times [or more], they should stop focusing on weight loss and start focusing on improving your metabolic fitness.”

That means leading a healthy lifestyle, eating sufficient calories for an adult. “Sufficient” generally means about 2000 calories a day, but Ikeda stressed that ideal levels can vary by weight and activity levels. The bottom line? The only way to have a healthy body weight, Ikeda said, is to have a healthy lifestyle.
-Journal of the American Dietetic Association

Dr. Keith and Laurie Nemec’s comments on dieting can be harmful to your health.
What this article showed was for a lot of people the idea that a diet is something to go on and off is wrong. Instead a diet should be an eating plan something that you are determined to stick with for life. It should not look at the short term goal of losing weight rapidly and then coming off a diet, because this will cause the never ending cycle of dieting and binging, dieting and binging. Instead adopting a lifestyle of decreased calorie intake but one that someone can handle and something that they can do for life. As the article also showed that studies coming from Scandinavia showed that repeated weight loss and regain actually increases the risk for future weight gain. Also the researchers showed that people that have lost weight and regained weight three times or more, should stop focusing on their weight loss and start focusing on leading a healthy lifestyle, which this includes not eating more than 2,000 calories a day.

The average American eats at least 2700 calories a day. How can this be attained? When we transition to a living raw plant diet one that is made up of vegetables, seeds, nuts, avocados, whole grains in the sprouted state, but uncooked state, sprouts themselves, all plant material in the uncooked state will be calorie reduction in of itself. A person will loose weight naturally without any side effects, without any yo-yoing effect, without ever gaining weight because when we eat these food, they are the most balanced foods created by God and they will fill us up, they will sustain us, they will give us everything that our body needs, and they will allow us to go to our ideal body weight naturally. This is one of the 7 Basic Steps to Total Health.

So, to recap we must get away from the finish of a thing, I want to be finished with my weight problems, I want to go on a diet, loose weight and be done with it. The problem is, once you are done with it, you are not done with it, you start up on the binging and the eating and then they weight gains and then you have to go on the diet to loose the weight. Doesn’t it make more sense to just eat the food and live the lifestyle that you are comfortable with, and can do it for the rest of your life and end this, this vicious cycle of weight gain, weight loss, weight gain?