How many times have you gone on a diet so far?

I tried the cabbage soup diet once. Have to say, the soup we made was actually pretty tasty... though the diet was horrible. I quit after three days and never did that again.

Healthy eating for the win

I used to be on a diet every few weeks since I hit puberty. Waaaaay more than seven times.

One average, a person will diet for weight loss about 7 times in their lifetime.

Once every diet is "done", statistically regain of 1/3-2/3 of weight lost happens in the first year. Regain of all lost weight happens within 5 years.

People will resort to doing a diet they lost on again or at least 2 times on average (which is why the diet industry makes billions).

Since dieting is a billion dollar business, there are lots of pseudoscience diets popping up frequently with the claim of "THIS IS IT".

Personally I've dieted more than 7 times in my lifetime, BUT 6 of those times were diets for bodybuilding competition preps.

Don't diet. Get a sensible eating lifestyle.

A.C.E. Certified Personal/Group FitnessTrainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

I'm in maintenance now, after dieting my one and only time, doing alternate day IF. I've gone into maintenance determined to be part of the 5% success rate and not the 95% that fail. My mom has been a yo yo dieter since she was 11 years old and now almost into her 60s, she's wreaked havoc on her body. Ironically, after all the diets she's tried, she's now doing alternate day IF and it's working beautifully for her and her relationship with food is changing, for the first time ever..She also has started exercising for the first time in her life and it's doing great things for her mentally (and physically I'm sure too!).

Way too many times. Never again.

I have "dieted"/put-myself-through-hell-and-back about 3 times total. My weight has varied from about 225lbs-95lbs. All were extreme 700 calories or less diets and lots of diet pills and laxatives. This is the first time I've decided to go with lifestyle changes that allow more flexibility and also exercising in conjunction with eating less and better. I.E - I don't act like it's the end of the world if I eat a piece of cake (granted this hasn't really become an issue). I've continued to gain as I slipped off my diets with high amounts of binge eating and "f*** you society! My body is perfect as is" justification. Now I get to watch my mom face a stomach stapling and her knees both giving out as she is forced to use a wheel chair till she looses weight. I can't justify the stuffing my face anymore and demonizing diets. Now I've had to make peace with the fact lifestyle changes need to happen.

This is my first walk around the park. And since this is a lifestyle change and not a diet, hopefully it'll stay that way.

I spent 14 years of my life on a 'diet-binge' cycle. I started out aged 18 wanting to lose 7lbs and put back on 10lbs. I lost 10lbs and put back on 15lbs. Eventually I was swinging 70lbs. At 35, I came to the conclusion that diets make you fatter!

So I stopped dieting and promised myself I would never diet again and I haven't. I've kept that promise for the past 15 years and have generally maintained my weight. However, what I have realised in the past year has been the importance of exercise in the scheme of things in keeping it all balanced. When I stopped exercising while I was writing my PhD, my weight drifted up, even though I wasn't eating more. So exercise was the key to keeping everything balanced and in the past couple of years I've upped my exercise and my weight drifted back down.

I have now maintained my weight to within a couple of pounds for the past year, eating an average of 2000 calories a day.

Yeah, I agree - don't diet - that is an arbitrary way of eating that is unsustainable in the long term. If you 'go on a diet' then you can 'come off a diet' and if you go back to what you did before then why would you not put on weight? You did before!

It's not until you come to terms with the idea that 'this is what I eat and how I will exercise for the rest of my life' that you will finally get to grips with your weight. I would always suggest going for long term sustainability over short-term dieting every time.

I have been on and of diets for almost 2 years prob about 5 different ones, could never stick with them but ive recently started dieting again and I plan on keeping to my diet and hoping to lose 41lb by end of november as I have told myself if I dont finish my diet by then I have no choise but to stay the weight I am now and I do not want that x

weight watchers x 3 (12 weeks at age 13, 6 weeks at 16, 2 weeks at 21 - found out i was pregnant)
calorie counting on my own x 5 (usually a few weeks or a month at a time, biggest success was when i found mfp and did it for 9 months solid)
herbalife for about a month recently
and now i'm back to mfp. hopefully for good. is hopefully a bad term to use? probably. but skepticism comes with years of perceived failure.

Once, I guess. Not sure if it really qualifies as a diet, because the goal was not to lose weight, but to get stronger. I was training for an athletic event. Changed my diet drastically (and not in a good way - bad info), and started lifting. Probably lost weight - I wasn't weighing myself so don't really know for sure how much. My appearance sure changed.

Once I quit that sport, the training stopped. I didn't add on more weight until at least 4 yrs. later, but lost the muscle definition pretty quickly.

Ha. I used to start a diet every Monday. LOL I tried Atkins, Southbeach, the blood type diet, other fad stuff, etc. None of that worked for me. What does work for me is clean eating, solid training and pride in eating for nutrition and fuel alone. I am a better athlete now at 31 b/c of nutrition then I was playing 3 sports in highschool and as a division 1 softball player in college.

Twice....

I tried the Adkins diet about 15 years ago. I didn't really have much weight to lose, but I had the beginnings of what would ultimately be a substantial gut. I would have been far better off just getting off my lazy *kitten* at that point. I was miserable.

I did South Beach about 10 years ago with only about 10-15 Lbs to lose...it worked, but I didn't adopt it as a lifestyle. I went back to consuming 3500 calories per day and not moving.

I dropped about 20 Lbs on my own before finding MFP. This was more about lifestyle...or as I like to call it, "good livin" than anything I've ever done in the past. The decision was made not necessarily out of wanting to lose weight, but some crazy health scares and "news flash" I'm not 25 anymore and need to take better care of myself if I want to see my kids grow up.

I started making better nutritional decisions and also started getting my fitness on again. Once upon a time, I was a relatively good athlete and ran track, played football, and thoroughly enjoyed hitting the weight room...not sure what happened, but when I started back up I found that I really missed it and wasn't difficult at all to get back into the swing of things.

I found MFP a couple of month later because I really wanted to start actively tracking certain macros and micros, as well as caloric intake. All in all I've dropped 35-40 Lbs and went to maintenance in April when I reached my initial goal. Spent a few months at maintenance now and have decided I want to shave a few more points of my BF% so small cut now again. I'm finding this a bit more difficult to stay at my deficit right now simply because I'm training for a couple of upcoming events and I tend to be hungrier than when I'm just working out for fitness. My calorie burns aren't drastically different, but for whatever reason I'm much hungrier.

I did the South Beach Diet 6 or so years ago. Lost a good bit of weight and kept it off until my next pregnancy.

Other than that, I'm not a huge dieter. I've done Weigjt Watchers and MFP. I consider this a diet because I'm not eating what I want/when I want due to restrictions. Some people feel it's a lifestyle change, but I just don't. I've always eaten pretty healthily, but I love carbs (even the good ones) and big portions, and that doesn't work well for me, so I'm forcing myself to stop. But unhappily.

Oh, I've been on a diet at least once a year for the past 35 years or so. Some were sensible, some were not.

Since I just cut my calories a little to try and lose a few more inches, I guess I'm on a diet right now.

I lost most of my weight by eating in front of the mirror naked. I'd only get half way through a meal and I'd be disgusted with myself and eventually put the fork down and walk away!