Ever wonder why it's nearly impossible to stay on a diet and lose weight? There are many reasons diets don't work and even more reasons to give up dieting forever and get on with your life. Read on to know more

If you've tried more diets than you remember, it's time to give it up once and for all and reach your goals the old fashioned way: with a little exercise and some small changes

A Diet is a Lifestyle, Not an Event

On many diets, you are not eating the way you will eat for the rest of your life. You eat foods you may not like very much and don't find satisfying. If you are determined enough, you stick with it until you reach your goal. But you know this is "just for the diet" rather than finding healthier foods you enjoy in amounts that don't cause weight gain.

Diets Can Be Downers

The very word "diet" is depressing to many of us. We think of giving up foods that are comforting and enjoyable. We may even stop socializing because food is a big part of how we interact with friends and family. We feel deprived, alienated and alone, except for others who are dieting. Eventually we give up and enter back into the world of happy uncontrolled eating, carrying negative feelings toward healthier "diet foods."

The Dangerous Yo-Yo Diet Cycle

Studies are finding dangers in the yo-yo diet cycle of losing weight, gaining it back plus a little more, losing, and gaining again. It is stressful on the body systems to have wide swings in body weight. We think each time that this time we won't gain it back, but the statistics show that most of us will. Control Issues

At first a diet can give you a sense of control. You are taking charge of your eating patterns. You may see success as the scale drops.

But soon you are fighting cravings for forbidden foods, as well as hunger pangs and a lack of energy from the lower calorie level. Eventually you rebel against the diet and start "cheating."

If your cheats are small you can still be losing weight, although more slowly. But soon you may go into full rebellion and return to your old eating habits.

Diets Slow Your Metabolism

Your body reacts to fewer calories by slowing down your metabolism -- burning fewer calories each day just to maintain your body functions.

If you don't add exercise along with the diet, you will lose lean muscle mass as well as fat and water weight. When you lose muscle, your metabolism is slowed even further and you would have to eat even fewer calories per day to continue to lose weight. It takes a conscious effort to increase exercise when on a diet.

If you don't exercise and then you fall off of the diet, the weight will come back on even faster, as your body is burning fewer calories per day. Even worse, the weight will come back on as fat rather than as the muscle you lost. Your body will look even less lean and healthy.

Solution: Get Active for an Hour a Day

Your first step to improve your health and appearance is to begin daily exercise. The exercise doesn't have to be intense -- pick activities you enjoy such as walking, biking, or swimming. Get your body moving most days of the week.

Quit dieting because:

1. The lower the calories eaten per day, the harder it is for you to get your daily requirements of proteins and vitamins.

2. Dieting makes your body believe it is starving so it starts to save fat, as this is its best way to store energy.

3. Losing weight means digesting your own body tissues instead of food and unfortunately, dieting does not tell your body what parts it needs to digest or which parts to save.

4. Severe dieting causes muscle loss and if you are unlucky the loss may be from your heart with severe consequences.

5. Dieting will make you difficult to live with and your family may want to kill you.

6. Dieting changes your body chemistry and one effect may be bad breath.

7. If you're a smoker you may smoke even more to dull the hunger pangs.

8. Binge eating, generally with very unsuitable foods often follows dieting.

9. Dieting makes you food obsessed.

10. Breaking a diet often results in guilt, poor self esteem and despair often followed by comfort eating.

11. Dieting emphasises food as a reward or compensation - so called 'comfort eating' where food is used to cheer us up or because it's raining we are somehow entitled to eat lots of sweets or cakes.

12. Dieting lowers the base metabolic rate which means you can live on less food, so when you return to your normal food intake which was already too high, you put on weight even faster than before and will probably end up heavier than before the diet.

13. Dieting does nothing to teach you to eat healthily. Healthy eating does not mean going hungry.

14. Dieting often causes constipation and this concentrates toxins and carcinogens within the bowels and they are present for a longer period. Fruit and vegetables have a positively beneficial effect on the smooth running of your digestive system.