Lose Fat & Gain Muscle Without "Dieting" - Dr Layne Norton

Why do diets fail so reliably over the long term?

Uh, a lot of different reasons, but if we zoom out and take a 10,000-foot view, uh, the main reason is because people view it as a diet instead of lifestyle change. So, if we dig into this th- statistics, if- of people who lose weight- or sorry, of obese people, seven out of every eight will lose a significant amount of body weight in their lifetime. So, why do we have an obesity problem? The problem is they- almost all of them put it back on, and in- in many cases, actually put on more than they lost. So, if you look at the weight regain statistics, and you go out, like, a year, depending on the stats you use and inclusion criteria for regain, 50 to 70% will have regained what they lost. Uh, if you go two years, it gets closer to 80, 85%, and if you look at three years, I mean, you're looking at 90% plus have put it back on. And so, a lot of people want to lose weight, but they only think about a diet as an end point. And so, if you stop doing the habits and behaviors that allowed you to lose it in the first place, you're not gonna sustain it. I mean, a great example is, uh, my father did a ketogenic diet, like, 20 years ago, and he lost 30 pounds. But slowly, he kind of reverted to his previous lifestyle, and so slowly the weight came back on. And so, I tell people it's hard to- if you're gonna lose a lot of weight, it's hard to change your life while dragging your old habits and behaviors behind you. And for whatever reason, this doesn't seem to, like, click with- with diet and lifestyle, because, you know, I- I looked at a, um, a systematic review of successful weight loss maintainers. So you're basically talking about the 5%, right? Like, the people who lose it and keep it off. What do they have in common? And this was a review by a researcher named Marie Sprecher, and it really stood out to me, because some of the stuff that you would expect is on there, which is cognitive restraint, meaning they're either tracking calories or limiting carbs or- or time restricting, s- some form of restraint, right? Like, you have to have some form of restraint. But then (sighs) ... And then there was exercise on there, self-monitoring, meaning they were weighing themselves frequently. You know, that's obvious, like, feedback. If you start going up, you change your habits again. But then there was something on there that, like, really kind of... It made sense, but I was like, "Huh, I never thought of it that way." And it was a lot of them, almost down to a person, identified that they had to form a new identity. Like, they had to become someone else. And d'you know Ethan Suplee?