The 10 Worst Ways to Go on a Diet

When you want to start dieting, it's easy to get excited and set yourself up for failure.

Many diets work well, but many more either don't work at all or backfire on you in the long run.

Here are the 10 worst ways to go on a diet.

While these methods may seem like they will help you lose weight, they're not successful in the long run and can even cause you to gain weight in some cases!

1) Fad Diets

With any diet, it's essential to do your research and make sure you have an idea of what you're getting into.

You can't just buy a new diet book every season and expect it to work, so be wary of anything that claims quick fixes.

Fad diets often offer rapid weight loss in exchange for radical changes in eating habits or severely limiting calories—any more than 800 calories per day is dangerous, according to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Some fad diets are designed with specific goals, like losing 15 pounds in 30 days!

Instead of making drastic life changes when you don't know what you're doing, take small steps.

2) Setting Yourself Up for Failure

It's all too easy to feel defeated at times, especially when trying to lose weight or eat better.

That being said, it's important not to set yourself up for failure by setting strict and unrealistic expectations.

For example, if you try something out of desperation and decide that it just isn't working for you, you might feel like you have no other options and sabotage your efforts because of frustration.

It's best if your overall goal is to improve your eating habits gradually so that you can integrate healthier choices into your life over time.

Healthy weight loss happens slowly, but it always happens eventually—don't push it too hard, or things will fall apart.

3) Not Understanding How Calories Work

The number of calories you consume makes up just one part of your weight-loss equation, but it's far away from an essential factor.

If you have no idea how many calories your body needs per day, you may eat too much or too little—either of which will keep you from losing weight effectively (if at all).

Work with your doctor or another healthcare provider to know exactly how many calories your body needs to function optimally and support any healthy weight-loss efforts.

While they can help estimate what's appropriate for someone like you who has had a stable weight for years, they should be able to pinpoint numbers specific to your height, age, sex, and activity level.

4) Unhealthy Cutting

Cutting out too many foods can lead to an unhealthy diet.

If you cut out cookies, you might be missing important nutrients found in grains and other healthy carbs.

You could also crave your favorite foods later and feel guilty for eating them when you know they're not good for you.

When it comes to healthy eating, balance is key. Stay away from cutting too many things out of your diet at once—it will only make it harder for you to stick with it over time.

It's best if you have at least one healthy thing that you always eat and a few treats that don't need to fit into your plan every day but can fit in every once in a while.

5) When Emotions Get in the way

If you're going on a diet to change your body and improve your self-esteem, keep in mind that diets often work by causing rapid weight loss, making you feel worse about yourself.

Research has shown that people who lose weight are more likely to experience depression and reverse-causation (when symptoms lead to illness rather than vice versa).

One study of postpartum women found that women with higher BMIs were more likely to report symptoms of depression before they had their babies.

The opposite was true for mothers with lower BMIs—they were more likely than average-weight moms to say depression after their babies.

6) Not Knowing Where to Start

If you're just now setting out to lose weight, you may have no idea where to begin.

Your doctor or other health care provider can give you recommendations for specific diet plans that target different needs and offer additional benefits.

For example, if weight loss is your goal, talk with your doctor about losing weight safely through exercise and healthy eating habits before launching into an extreme diet plan that may not be sustainable in the long run.

Having support from someone trained in recommending diet plans can set you up for success by helping create realistic goals based on your medical history and lifestyle.

7) Going Too Far

If you're overweight, you can probably stand to lose at least five pounds or so.

That might not sound like much, but losing it will affect your health if that extra weight is around your waistline.

However, most people are overly ambitious when they start their diets and go much further than they should. Suddenly, they severely restrict calories or carbs and consume strange new foods in significant quantities.

One day they wake up and realize that they've done too much damage; not only did they fail to lose weight, but now they have made themselves sick or irritable in doing so.

Always remember: Going too far can make things worse rather than better.

8) Taking it too Seriously

Don't take it too seriously—if you do, you'll probably fail.

Truly believing that you're going to go on a diet is like thinking that you have to be friends with every person in your social circle for life.

You don't. Your relationship with food is similarly flexible and forgiving. As long as you meet your goals for today and are generally moving in the right direction, who cares what happens tomorrow?

If it works out great, fantastic!

9) Ignoring Good Nutrition Advice

When following any diet, it's essential to consult with your doctor and nutritionist before starting.

If you create a diet completely the wrong way, your body may react badly; so unless you know what you're doing, don't do it.

You can end up sick or hurt yourself if you avoid paying attention.

The same goes for any other aspect of life—be careful and pay attention when approaching anything new!

10) Not Paying Attention

The first (and worst) thing people do when they want to go on a diet is not pay attention.

This means they ignore what they eat, how much they eat, or why they eat certain foods.

They're focused more on their weight than understanding how each food impacts their bodies.

If you are genuinely going to change your diet and live healthier, these issues should be dealt with before starting any plan.

You have to understand how different foods impact your body and why.

It would help if you also learned how to read nutrition labels to make informed decisions about what goes into your body.

It's essential to focus on changing habits instead of obsessing over weight loss because otherwise, it becomes an unhealthy obsession that leads people down dangerous paths like fad diets, pills, or crash diets that will only harm them in the long run.

Pay attention—your health depends on it!