Why Dieting Can Be So Difficult – 27 Common Problems People Face

A nutritionist explains many common problems people face when trying to master their diet.

Why do so many people quit? Why is it so overwhelming?

What puppet master is pulling the strings behind the scenes?

Warning, this may take 10-15 minutes to read and can be quite overwhelming… grab a cup of coffee or tea and sit back as I take you on a journey that gives you a map of the nutrition environment and all of its obstacles.

After seeing thousands of people enter transformation challenges at various gyms, and helping so many clients with their nutrition I have realised some consistencies…  I would say the average success rate is around 10-15% of participants who really try and make a transformation. Half of the people who try to make changes to their diets fail or just go back to their old habits

Think of this post as a landscape of dietary change, and I, Simon, am your tour guide – each one of these factors is an obstacle that could potentially fuck up your journey. Be warned, this post may seem a little heavy, but I wanted to highlight the areas of complexity and offer a solution for each

I have broken it down into 3 categories:

1 – Problems in the fitness and nutrition industry

2 – Problems in society

3 – Problems the individual faces

There is no simple answer to this question as many of these factors relate to each other… enjoy the journey!

1. PROBLEMS WITHIN FITNESS AND NUTRITION INDUSTRY

Nutrition Camps

Believe it or not there in not 1 “ultimate diet” that works for everyone, but there are many groups of people that try and advocate one type as being the best.  We have all met Ketogenic diet advocates, vegans, paleo, vegetarians and now even carnivores. These are just a few of the many camps within the nutrition world. Its nice to have some diversity, but this often confuses the average joe as they hear too many strong opinions!

Furthermore, all of these camps manage to find some research to back up their claims or have influential people backing them. They throw around their methods as being the “one and only” as soon as they notice some success from a particular method.

Take home message: Be careful of diet cults – they may produce results, but you can be fed a lot of poor-quality information or advice.

Supplement Companies

Many (not all) supplement companies would have you believe that the pathway to muscle gain, fat loss etc is through buying their product. This is WRONG! I am yet to find any fat burning product that can outperform the weight loss effect of a calorie deficit! Supplements are useful as a tool to improve your diet, not to replace it! Many supplements provide poor quality effects in comparison to how they are marketed. Many supplements base their claims on poor quality research. It’s a mess and unless you know how to find the REAL high-quality supplements, then you may be wasting your money and time.

Take home message: Always address your dietary intake first then use supplements as a boost

Pyramid Schemes

This is the biggest joke amongst qualified health professionals. Any coach or nutritionist worth his weight in gold will not support these money-making schemes. They lead individuals to believe that their company has the answer to their health and financial freedom, and then charges them a premium for being included in their cult.

The supplements are overpriced and the system leaves 99% of the nutritionally inspired individuals paying more money than they believed they would be able to earn.

Yes, a lot of people lose weight and make a transformation using these systems… but its due to a calorie deficit, not because of a magical formula or supplement.

The experience leaves people with empty wallets and a distorted view of nutrition. Its not good for building a quality nutrition skillset that relies on eating the right foods.

Take home message: Be incredibly careful when being approached by those promising to give you a lifechanging experience by selling their products. 99% of the people in these systems are losing.

Vague Advice

This is a personal pet peeve of mine, but I think many people have had an experience along the lines of “just eat less bread” or “try to limit snacking”. I do think these approaches have their time and place, but sometimes the individual needs clear instructions and a solid dose on nutrition education to help them understand why they are doing what they are doing.

Take home message: Seek advice that is proven to get results and you can implement easily

Self-Proclaimed Guru’s

Everywhere you look you can find Instagram models, personal trainers, pyramid system health coaches and people who got a ‘nutrition degree’ online in 6 weeks. These people may have a following, be in good shape and have shown success with transforming others, BUT, they usually have very narrow understanding of nutrition. Ask them what their qualifications are and if they are able to back up their advice with quality evidence. 

Take home message: Always take what you hear with a grain of salt

Shitty fitness equipment that promises to fix all your problems

I cannot stress enough – those “ab blaster pros”, electrocuting ab blasting machines or the vibrating platform are the biggest jokes in the industry. They prey on sleep deprived lonely uneducated individuals who are sitting behind a TV. Real results require effort, but these companies want to sell you something simple that requires almost 0 effort… it won’t make you change, and most people do not use these pieces of equipment for long.

NO ONE who is in really good shape got that way from standing on vibrating platform. What is interesting to notice (next time you see one of these products) is that there is usually a tiny disclaimer down the bottom of the screen that says “must follow X nutrition plan for results” (or something along those lines).

Take home message: The piece of equipment does not work. What does work is the diet and lifestyle changes that go along with it. Also, the majority the fitness models you see promoting these products got fit from other forms of activity.

Gyms and Various Exercise Routines

I think that is fair to say that the majority of gyms would like to make you think that exercise is the key to weight loss and getting in good shape. Don’t get me wrong, physical exercise is one of the BEST things you can do for your health. However, after many years of training, most people come to the realisation that the exercise they are doing is not working as well as it was promised – they have been sold an idea that training is the majority of the results. The gyms and exercise programs are often promising results that they cannot deliver without properly addressing the individual’s nutrition and lifestyle. Nutrition is at least 70% of the results, training is probably 20% and lifestyle is the remaining 10%. I have seen hundreds of people in the same shape if not WORSE shape after 2-3 years at a gym, why? Because they never improved their nutrition. If you are going to try and achieve results, focus on what you need to do to get those results

There are also a huge range of exercise routines that provide very MINIMAL results in comparison to proper training (yet market themselves as producing amazing physique). I won’t go into the details of proper training in this post, but, just know there is a right and wrong way to do things. 

Take home message: Majority of ads from gyms feature incredibly fit people, the marketing is often misleading as those fit people got that way from years of training and clean eating.

2. PROBLEMS WITH THE STRUCTURE OF SOCIETY

Poor quality information & nutrition myths

Poor quality nutrition information floats around the nutrition industry worse than poor quality training in the fitness industry. Everyone has met someone who thinks “carbs are bad” or “low fat is a better option because fats make you fat”. There are hundreds of these nutrition myths floating around and here are a few more:

• Eating more often speeds up your metabolism
• High protein diets are bad for you
• Eating eggs is bad for your cholesterol
• Diet soda spikes your insulin and can lead to diabetes
• You can’t gain muscle on a plant-based diet

These pieces of poor-quality information spread like a virus through misinformed people, anecdotal evidence and gym bros. There is also the problem of “the science delay” which I will talk about later.

Take home message: Read everything, listen to everybody, believe nothing unless you can prove it with your own research

The news relays bad advice constantly

Many (not all) news stations are feeding you distorted nutrition information. They are obsessed with wine, chocolate, coffee and other controversial subjects. It is very common for the news to take a small piece of a recent study and turn the ‘take home message’ into something else (like Chinese whispers).

Take home message: Try to refrain from absorbing nutrition information or tips from the news.

Nutrition is poorly taught in schools or not at all

It is crazy to think that nutrition (a skill that we need to use 3-5 times a day) is not taught in school.  We spend months learning subjects that are useless later in life. Its an outrage that the school system does not have a solid nutrition component (other than the small dose in PE).

Take home message: Nutrition education should be part of a child’s development; we would have less overweight citizens and reduced rates of health problems.

Corporate greed and addictive foods

Above is an infographic showing all the major food brands and how they are all owned by a few large companies.

Corporations rarely care about your health and wellbeing. They care about selling products and improving their profit margins. Many of them will fill their products with sugar (or any of its 50+ substitutes) to improve the taste and satisfaction of their product.

Some companies will even trial out a huge range of food items (their product) with hundreds of participants (invited to eat their food) and study which food item is favoured. They KNOW what food to sell because they have developed it to be delicious and addictive.

These companies have a lot of money and can fund these ‘research’ products to help them develop their products so they can sell sell sell. It is reported that some product researchers have used brain scans to see how much the ‘pleasure centre’ of your brain lights up when you consume various products. The use this info to find out which product give the best pleasure response and then it is more likely to be accepted by the masses and promote reoccurring sales.

Take home message: Try to avoid many of these foods, yes they are delicious, yes you “LOVE that food” but, you are not a special snowflake for loving that food, you are a victim to a well designed product that triggers your primal reward centre in the brain (more on this later)

Persuasive marketing

If the addictive / delicious product was not bad enough, marketing has taken it to another level. Marketers know what images, fonts, icons and trigger words to use to grab your attention. We aware of trigger words such as gluten free, gmo free, vegan, low carb, low fat or my personal favourite; high protein. These eye catching statements DO NOT mean the product is healthy, but rather they are just using a smart marketing tactic to tick one of the boxes that you use to make food choices.

Up-and-go (now the most popular breakfast food) is a great example of marketing success. They say “the same protein and  fibre as two weetbix and milk”. This is smart because weetbix has a good rep as a healthy breakfast and you also know protein and fibre being healthy. The consumer is left thinking “it’s easier to consume the liquid and I get the same nutrition?”. Not exactly true… it contains more sugar, higher calories and much lower nutritional value than actually eating weetbix. All three Up & Go flavours contained around 20g of sugar and cost $4 per serve, compared with a bowl of Weetbix which cost 24 cents per serve.

Many breakfast cereal products use these same tactics to promote their products as healthy. Do you think ‘the iron man food’ is food?

Take home message: Be aware of packaging and ads – it can be misleading and trying to trigger you to make misinformed choices

It takes awhile before new science reaches the masses (outdated advice)

Just think how long it took for Intermittent fasting to become accepted as a norm? I have been praising the health benefits of intermittent fasting since 2016, and now it’s finally common knowledge. There is a huge delay in what we are recently discovering and what is accepted as the ‘norm’.

I believe this delay is decreasing as the internet is providing ample ways to assimilate new information. However, it is good to remind ourselves “my opinions are only based on what I know, and I may not have all the information on this topic. There is great quality information out there that is well beyond the common consensus if you are willing to seek it.

Take home message: Be a nutrition agnostic and question everything you hear. Do your own research and read proper nutrition books or follow university level gurus

Information Overload

The digital age has brought the ability to access endless amounts of information. It is great to be able to find recipes, formulas, how-to videos etc. However, many people get lost in this clutter and do not know how to filter out the truth from the lies and sales websites. Especially with nutrition or training, these are longer term commitments and you want to know that you are following a method that is proven to be successful. Finding good information sources on the internet can take awhile as you need to map out the landscape.

Take home message: Try to find information sources you can trust

3. PROBLEMS ON THE INDIVIDUAL LEVEL

Lack of knowledge

This is an obvious one, many people struggle with dieting as they do not understand the basics of nutrition. Understanding proteins, carbs, fats, calories, metabolism, energy balance can get you a long way! It also REALLY HELPS if you know what macronutrients are in which types of foods. I try to ensure that each of my dietary clients understand these basic skills.

These nutrition skills and knowledge is a worthwhile investment of your time as it will affect your body composition, health, immune system, sport performance, recovery and longevity (how long you will live).

I respect anyone who is willing to put in the time to grow their nutrition knowledge, as without it you can easily be a victim to unexplainable fluctuations in weight, energy levels and mood. If you truly wish to perform optimally, you must learn the basics of nutrition so you can make educated choices.

Take home message: Learn to accept that nutrition is a skill you need for life, and you need to invest some effort into becoming good at it! Be sure to download my FREE E-book – Basics Of Nutrition. This will help you get started! 

Lack of cooking skills

Many people hate eating healthy foods because they don’t taste great in comparison to KFC and other fast foods. You need to know some basics of cooking in order to turn real foods into delicious meals… This one is simple, I won’t get into details – learn to cook bro! You can make healthy foods delicious AF.

Take home message: Don’t be lazy, learn to cook delicious foods

Parental influence

Think back to the information that was fed to you from your parents about what constitutes a healthy diet… anything coming to mind? It’s not their fault, health and nutrition advice are much better than it used to be. Doctors used to tell people smoking and consuming sugar was good for you. Our parents (generally) had a lower level of nutrition education than we currently have.

Poor quality information and habits still float around between communities and families. These group habits take a long time to change and can hugely effect someone’s eating habits. I have consulted many people who are overweight or even underweight and it had a lot to do with how they were raised. The eating habits you develop as a child or teenager can make a dramatic influence on your weight, growth and self-confidence.

Some countries have made it a punishable offence if your child is overweight or obese, and so it should be, they depend on the parents to make good food choices for them

Take home message: Be mindful of the eating habits you have acquired from your family

Lack of direction

Many people haven’t been shown a way to succeed with nutrition – it can be incredibly discouraging when the only dietary experiences you have attempted have failed miserably. I have a lot of clients come to me amazed when they lose weight… I always think, WHY? It’s proven to be effective.

They are amazed because all of the other solutions they have tried have failed.

There are 1000 ways to skin a cat and there are also 1000 ways to lose weight. All diets work if you have a calorie deficit. The best diet for you is the diet that you can stick to in the long run and gets you the results you want at the level of commitment you are willing to endure.

Take home message: Reflect often and ask yourself these questions – Can I improve my nutrition more? What areas of my life can I change in order to see results? What protocol can I try that fits my lifestyle? Where am I getting my nutrition education? 

Lack of self-discipline to change

Some people are not able to change just because they lack the willpower to move out of their comfort zones. Changing your nutrition IS changing your lifestyle. You have to change your shopping habits, your cooking habits, your meals, your snacks etc. The foods you may have loved eating regularly are gone and it may take some time to adjust to the new routine. Self-discipline to change means you have a solid goal to a brighter future, where the healthier happier version of yourself is able to sustain good eating habits all year.

Self-discipline is also required to “get back on the horse”. Everyone encounters obstacles, setbacks and failures. Life rarely goes to plan. When this happens, you get back on track, and keep moving forward! That fight that you had with your sister or friend is no excuse to let your diet crumble for 2 days. That wedding / hangover you had is also no excuse to quit.

Take home message: Set a goal and stick to it long enough to see results!

Social pressure and unhealthy friends

This is a big deal for a lot of people. Many of us have friends who are more than willing to eat a whole pizza and coke and not bat an eyelid. Or the friends who drag you to MacDonald’s after a night out drinking. These friends may not respect their health or care about their nutrition. There is a famous saying “you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”.

Take home message: Find friends who hold nutrition and health to the same or higher standard than you do!

Habitual eating times

Did you know that when you eat regularly at the same times your body releases appetite hormones to make you hungry at that same time. If you are a constantly snacking of changing your eating times, you may be battling against inconsistent appetite signalling

Take home message: Eat regularly at the same times to avoid appetite inconsistencies

Environmental triggers 

What if I told you that your environments can trigger you to think and feel in certain ways? I don’t think its too much of a stretch to say people get more work done in the office, study better in the library and train harder at the gym compared to home.

Environments have an impact on how you think and feel, and some environments are built for disaster. If your workplace is constantly full of poor-quality food. If your house has heaps of snacks. If you find food in your mouth shortly after opening the fridge (GUILTY). If you usually snack while sitting on a specific couch. All of these occasions you could find yourself consuming food without even putting much thought into it, its habitual, its autopilot, it’s the environment triggering a habit. It is good to try and set your environments up for success – remove snacks from the fridge or find healthy snacking alternatives.

Take home message: Set up your environments for success, clean out the fridge and pantry! New habits take time to form, until then, eat healthier alternatives.

The Rebound Effect – aka – diets do not work

Everyone has heard the expression ‘diets don’t work’. This is a common shared experience for a few reasons:

• Reason 1 – Diet was a bad fit – The diet was not a good fit for you and contained meals you didn’t enjoy eating
• Reason 2 – No flexibility – You never learnt how to adjust your diet or create your own meals
• Reason 3 – Tracking is difficult – You are not mathematically inclined, so asking you to track everything was unrealistic
• Reason 4 – Didn’t diet long enough – You spent a few days or weeks attempting it then some life event happened, and you didn’t see results so why bother trying
• Reason 5 – Adherence – You didn’t adhere to the diet properly (your calories were too high) and thus you didn’t see results
• Reason 6 – Template diets -You got sick of sticking to the same boring “chicken and rice” template diet
• Reason 7 – Reliance on others – after using meal services such as jenny craig, weight watchers, meal prep companies etc many individuals never learnt how to diet/cook for themselves

As you can see there is a multitude of reasons why ‘diets’ don’t work for many induvial and they usually rebound, feeling sad and sorry for wasting their time and efforts. Many of these solutions didn’t offer the flexibility or education that is required for long term results!

Take home message: Many “diets” don’t work because they are too restrictive, they deprive people of foods they enjoy, or they lack nutritional education. Many people who eat amazingly healthy and achieve results do not think of it as a diet – they have learnt how to eat the right foods in the right amount and satisfy their cravings in a healthy way.

The primal ‘reward’ centre in the brain

As mentioned earlier, this pleasure reward centre of your brain can be triggered by foods. Thousands of years ago this pleasure response was originally there to help us find calorie dense foods so we could survive. It is a primal survival mechanism, much like how we have acquired a taste for salt (as salt was hard to come-by in ancient times).

Foods high in sugar or fat were hard to find so our brains evolved to reward us when we consumed these foods… this would provide you with some dopamine, helping to form the habit, and assuring the body has energy stored for the tough times to come (long winters, harsh environments, etc).

Brain: eat more of this, it feels good 😉

Stupid monkey who doesn’t know anything about nutrition: Okay!

Monkey consume more calorie dense foods and survives.

Your taste sensations and associated pleasure response mechanisms were originally intended to help you consume calorie dense foods in order to survive. Now that calories are easy to come by, this system does not help us as much anymore. Rather, people are falling victims to this pleasure-response relationship and consuming too much because it feels good to eat.

Some people self-identify with their “love” for a specific food or junk food… the question is, is person really in love with the food, or have they been repetitively programmed into loving that food. They are more-so a victim of their primal reward hardwiring combined this with calorie dense foods that are engineered by corporations to trigger this reward centre.

Combine this “reward factory” with calorie dense addictive foods and you have yourself a population of people addicted to eating their way to an early grave. It’s a hard cycle to kick but you need to learn to eat 70-90% for function and enjoy these pleasure signals to an appropriate amount.

Take home message: You are not a unique special snowflake for enjoying calorie dense foods, you are human, and you are programmed to seek it. Controlling this primal urge is important for body composition goals and long-term health!

Sugar cravings

Sugar is highly addictive due to this primal reward centre giving you spikes of dopamine. No wonder it is added to the majority of processed food products. Did you know that bacon usually has some added sugar?

Aside from the potential dopamine addiction, there also appears to be ANOTHER reason that sugar is addictive!

Sugar also promotes the growth of bad bacterial in the gut which feed off of the sugar and multiply in numbers. Additionally, recent studies have discovered that bacteria have the ability to send signals to the brain to encourage consumption of the food they thrive off. The more bacteria that grow, the stronger these signals can become. Consumption of sugar increases the number of bad bacteria in the gut, which increases the signal those bacteria send to the brain. It’s a vicious cycle of addiction.

These addictions are one thing, but sugar is actually terrible for your health. If you just search on the internet you will find hundreds of studies that support this. It is believed that sugary drinks ALONE contribute to 184,000 deaths every year.

Take home message: Sugar is terrible for your health. Quit! Quit now! If you do any 1 thing to improve your health you should quit sugar! Do it yesterday!

Lack of mentors or good role models of healthy eating

It is hard to find people out there who really have a firm grip on their nutrition. Even the ones who are shredded and full of muscle, many of them have no idea to adjust their diets and consume a wide range of foods. Its hard to find those around you who are regularly eating amazing foods and engaging in conversations about how to improve their nutrition.

I think talking about healthy eating should be more common and people should be passionate about it as it brings so many benefits! Through good conversations we can learn ways to improve.

Take home message: Find people to talk to about nutrition

The impact of sleep on appetite hormones and fat loss

This one is not common knowledge. Did you know your sleep cycle can have a dramatic impact on your level of cravings and also the metabolism of your fat cells? One study found participants on the calorie-controlled diet lost 55% less weight when they were deprived of sleep. For tips on how to improve your sleep quality, read this article I wrote!

Take home message: Improve your sleep to regulate your appetite hormones and improve fat loss