Dieting is big business, the diet industry has more than doubled since the
90s, and in 2020 it topped 71 billion dollars.
Each year some 45 million people in the United States go on weight loss
programs and 95 percent of them fail.
And yet millions of us open our wallets to try the latest trendy diets
cleanses and low calorie meal plans to cut down the pounds.
I've spent thousands.
I've spent thousands of dollars.
I've probably spent a thousand dollars.
I would say I spent over three thousand,
Probably upwards of at least past ten thousand dollars,
Thousands of dollars on weight loss supplements, meal plans.
And with the rise of social media, there's even more pressure to obtain
seemingly impossible beauty standards for men and women.
Negative body image does not live in fat cells.
Here's how dieting grew into a 71 billion dollar industry, even though an
overwhelming majority of diets fail and being smaller doesn't necessarily
mean healthier. This is Suddenly Obsessed.
When it comes to diets, there is no shortage of options.
From tailored meal plans like Slim Fast and Nutrisystem to support groups
like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers.
Then there's high fat, no carb, no gluten models by keto and paleo.
And with the rise in technology, companies are now using consumer data and
A.I. to tailor customized plans to individual needs.
With the personalization capabilities that we have powered
by machine learning, etc., we can match you with a program that
is specific to you and ultimately greater weight loss.
But all of these diets have one thing in common--
Restriction. Consuming fewer calories is a common way to lose weight.
And what that means is that you're having to ignore your body's signals and
your body's cues of what it needs.
And so diets end up impacting how you think as well.
And those powerful signals not a lack of willpower or why so many diets
fail, which may help explain how the Atkins diet became a three billion
dollar empire. Since its founding in the 1960s, Robert Atkins spent
decades researching the impact of a low carb, low sugar diet on weight
loss. The low carb diet became one of the most popular restrictive eating
programs in America because it left a lot of food options on the table.
We reeducate people on the types of carbohydrates that have the least
impact on their blood sugar and coached them on how to reintroduce those
carbohydrates into their diet.
Be more strict.
You are with carbohydrate restriction and the more effective it will be
for weight loss.
My husband and I have been on this weight loss journey since May of 2017
and I've lost 85 pounds and my husband has lost over 100 pounds.
We're really focused on using the science to back up any type of claims we
make, whether it's on optimal protein intake, healthy fats, the types of
carbohydrates that we encourage people to eat.
But health officials warn that low carb, high protein diets can have
negative effects, saying it can lead to joint pain, gout, osteoporosis and
kidney stones. Atkins uses a subscription free model while providing
nutrition education and online resources at no cost.
However, the company spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually
marketing its line of branded prepackaged foods.
The diet has an incredibly loyal following.
I have lost eighty five pounds when the Atkins lifestyle and I've been able
to keep it off since 2018.
So almost three years now.
I have lost 100 pounds and I've been able to keep it off for almost 15
years now. Today, Atkins has over 500,000 registrants and relies heavily
on word of mouth to increase awareness.
For every person who experiences weight loss, a million will sign up.
Atkins makes me feel like I can face anything.
And because Atkins's is a model with no initiation fees and free online
resources, more people are enticed to try a plan.
But calling Atkins' "free" doesn't sit well with some mental health
professionals. Is the concept that some of these programs are free is
really silly. Diets like Atkins, they have a lot of products while they're
relatively low cost.
They also have their own food and a ton of marketing.
There's product, but there's also a lifestyle that's convince people that
if diets fail, it is because of the dieter.
Case in point, Atkins self-reported spending around five hundred thirty
million dollars on marketing and advertising its line of foods in 2020.
We allow people to experience the joy food brings to us every day.
Alternative weight loss products like shakes, cleanses and milk supplements
are a five billion dollar industry, even though there are doubts about
their safety and effectiveness.
Shockingly, those products do not require FDA regulation to be sold to
consumers, which means that there is no way to tell what's really in them.
There's no scientific data.
Some people may experience side effects.
Some people may experience really dangerous consequences.
So it's always wise just not to take it.
One of the supplements I did take was something called Craze.
Craze is a kind of like energy supplement that was actually banned by the
military because one of the chemical components of it was very similar to
methamphetamines.
I've also tried a diet that involves hormones, eating 500 calories a
day, A diet called the First Fitness Suddenly Slim Program, which included
taking pills.
I was in the shower and then all of a sudden everything whited out.
The substance, I think, is now banned in America.
I did lose 30 pounds in 30 days with that and instantly gained it all
back. Prolonged use of laxatives can cause digestive issues, throw off
your electrolyte balance and cause dehydration.
The FDA has approved just five weight loss supplements in the market,
leaving hundreds of thousands entirely unregulated.
The FDA publicly warns about the dangers of hidden active ingredients and
claims of exaggerated results in a short span of time, from dietary
supplements to the latest diet scheme's weight loss fraud is in the air,
on the airwaves and online.
I don't think the average person has a good sense of what the lasting
consequences could be.
And even if they do have a sense of those consequences, they tend to view
being overweight or not fitting into the ideal body standard as being more
harmful or more difficult to deal with.
And so they're willing to take that risk.
The more drastic the diet, the more likely it is to fail.
Many people with a lifelong struggle with their weight go through periods
of rapid weight ahead on starting a new diet, but then gain the weight
back over time. I once fasted for eight days straight without food and
only water. Once the past was over within like a month.
I went from my original weight plus 10 to 15 pounds.
Experts say one fundamental reason why diets don't work is because of a
disconnect between what the mind wants and the body needs.
So while your mind is able to say this is just a diet, the body
believes that you don't have access to enough food.
It believes you're in the middle of a famine, that you need to hurry up
and find food in order to survive.
When someone fails to stick to a drastic diet that dramatically reduces
their calorie intake, they may find themselves binge eating to compensate.
And so it will begin a set of physiological responses geared toward
pushing you to eat more.
You will start thinking about food more often, obsessing about food more
often. I took one bite of lasagna.
By the end of the night I had a half a pound of lasagna.
It was like as soon as I had that one piece of carb, I couldn't stop
having carbs. I ate all carbs in any form.
And studies have shown that frequent dieting, the cycles of repeated
restriction and binge eating can lead to eating disorders like anorexia
and bulimia. Study done in nineteen ninety five showed that thirty five
percent of occasional dieters turn into pathological dieting, which is
what we've kind of now called disordered eating.
And from there as many as 30 to 45 percent advanced into full-blown eating
disorders. It's been proven that an intense focus on dieting is one of the
biggest predictors for developing an eating disorder, which brings in the
role of prioritizing mental health.
Which is why a millennial oriented weight loss program called Noom is
taking a mental health approach to weight loss.
In 2019, Noom generated over 200 million dollars in revenue and is
expecting to double that figure in 2021.
More than 60 percent of Noomers lose more than five percent of body weight.
We've had millions of people who have used Noom in the past, and we're
continuing to grow for less than a price of a cup of coffee a day you will
have a powerful tool working for you.
Noom has a flexible subscription plan ranging from fifty nine dollars per
month or a longer commitment of one hundred and ninety nine dollars per
year. It uses surveys and artificial intelligence to tailor its database
of nutrition education, goal setting and health coaching tools to
individual user needs.
Each person is then given weight loss related tasks to help them on their
journey, which can be as simple as reading a specific article.
And then they have guides of color coded systems of food calorie trackers
to stay in alignment with long and short term goals and results.
There are little things to do every day, and that's what the AI and the
coach have chosen.
It's different every day.
And that's one of the things that we hear is that variety keeps it fresh.
Noom then pairs you with two coaches to keep you accountable and motivated.
One is a goal specialist.
In the other one is your group coach who can answer some of the more
technical things. And you also have a group of people going through the
app at a similar pace as you in a similar time frame.
It's kind of like having a workout companion or a nutritional expert just
on my shoulder.
What Noom actually does is help you work with the psychology behind that to
change the way you think.
And we do that through a combination of human coaching and A.I.
to then help you understand yourself and then meet those health goals.
Early on they show you they're like, look, diets don't work.
These are the studies. Diets don't work.
But it's not you. It's the approach.
That's why we are not presenting you with a diet.
What we present is behavioral modification.
Noom is different.
We're behavior change company I started around 220, 225 are now 195.
So I lost 25, 30 pounds at my heaviest.
I was two hundred and thirty one pounds.
And at my latest I lost 80 pounds with Noom.
But even Noom's modernized approach to bridging the body mind gap can't
escape the negative psychological factors associated with calorie
restriction. It could still lead to obsession because you're still calorie
counting and you're still really hyper focused on food all the time.
It color categorizes foods, you count calories, you
track your food.
And the reality is, is it is just a diet like any other diet.
If we're reducing the number of calories that we're eating, and we're not
seeing success. I can imagine the frustration and getting super upset and
fixated on it.
No doubt the widespread use of social media has been a boon to the weight
loss industry. But over the past decade, a new wave of thinking about
weight loss has made its way into the social stratosphere.
Body positivity.
It is making a big impact on exposing people to more body types
and broader views of what it means to be beautiful.
Perhaps the most effective way to lose weight doesn't require an app or an
expensive meal plan. Food author Michael Pollan said it best.
"Eat food. Not too much, mostly plants." Or how about this?
Do it makes your mind and your body feel good.