Diets and addiction: Why diets are addictive

Always trying the latest diet even though you’re never happy with the results? Here's why you keep getting hooked

Diets are like those crisps in a tube: once you pop the top you just can’t stop. Go on one diet and it can turn into an endless cycle. Dieting makes you dependent on dieting – tremendous news for the diet industry, which relies on repeat business.

Dieting strips away your natural ability to know when you’re hungry and what you need to eat – two vital mechanisms that you were born with but have probably learned to override. Once you start counting calories, you’ll not only spend more time thinking about food, but you’ll also rely on the diet to dictate exactly what and how much you eat.

When you first start a diet you may stick to only the 'acceptable' foods but this gets old quickly. Most dieters end up depriving themselves until they can no longer stand it, then break their regime with a binge or ditch their diet altogether.

The National Institute of Health in America rocked the diet industry when it analysed several high-profile weight loss plans and concluded, ‘There is no good evidence that any popular weight loss programme has much chance for long-term success.’ Why so pessimistic? Because the normally quoted success rate across the board for all mainstream diets is a miserable 5%. In fact, 95 out of every 100 people who diet will regain all the weight they lost (and usually a bit more) within six months.