Dieting doesn't work, unless Personalized Weight Loss Plans become more available. A diet designed for a mass audience will fail because that diet assumes everything is constant or the same between dieters. Not so.

Personalized Weight Loss Plans have a better chance of succeeding because they take into account personal habits, ideas, and goals of each dieter.

It comes down to, "What is good for you may not be good for me."

Start Positive

Before going any further, I want to stress some positives about Personalized Weight Loss Plans and about you, the dieter. Regardless of diet type, successful dieters do the following things consistently with Personalized Weight Loss Plans:

They Stick With It (Long-Term Treatment)
The longer you are in a weight-loss program the more weight you will lose. Forty weeks to a year is not unreasonable and truly speaking, long term success should always be measured at 2, 3, and 5 years.

The million dollar question is why do most people lose weight fairly easy in the first 6 months, only to gain it back within one year? The answer is simple really...the diet or the dieter failed.

See it's easy after all. Let's move on.

They stop eating for the sake of eating.
To be successful, a person must learn to reassociate eating with hunger. Learning to slow down to allow satiety to catch up with eating is one way to effect this change. Binge eaters tend to have the least success with losing weight long term, even though many will appear to be doing very well early in a diet.
They have a support network.People who lose weight generally have help. A mentor, a guide, and a friend are perfect as a support network for successful dieters.
They are physically active.
An old study from the early nineties concluded that exercise helps long-term weight loss but not short-term. I say it doesn't matter. Eventually, a large well designed study will show that exercise during any time in life is beneficial.

This can not be stressed enough...exercise is paramount to your success. You will exercise more with personalized weight loss plan.

The best kind is a mix between aerobic exercises and resistance training. The result is toned muscle and a strong protection from age related weight gain.

They believe in what they are doing.
Get this...Dr. Gene Ogden in her study back in 1993 found that the women who believed their weight problems were caused by their own choices, rather than by metabolism or genetics, were more successful.

They believed that they were in control of their weight and, therefore, believed they could lose weight. A personalized weight loss plan gives the dieter control of the entire weight loss process.

Many people think they can't lose weight, either because of their "slow" metabolisms, their mothers' large thighs or because they've had trouble sticking with diets or exercise routines in the past. They're wrong.

Maybe you'll never be considered svelte, but you can take off enough weight to feel better, look better and reduce your risk of disease.

Pamela Peeke, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of medicine at the University of Maryland in Baltimore and author of Fight Fat Over Forty (Viking, 2000) said, "You have to believe that you will drop some weight and then begin that journey. Once you believe success is possible, you'll feel less intimidated by the challenges along the way."

The Blame Game Can End

Why do traditional diets fail? From a dieters perspective, diets fail because they are hard to stick with or they don't produce the expected results. From a diets perspective, dieters don't stick with the diet or dieters set unrealistic goals.

Who is to blame? Both. But personalized weight loss plans eliminate this blame game and re-focus the dieter on tweaking the diet differently to make it work.

Personalized weight loss plans, force you, the dieter, to identify those things keeping you overweight. How you eat, what you eat, when you eat, lack of exercise...the list goes on. A big mistake dieters make is under reporting caloric intake.

In a study conducted at St Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, energy expenditure was measured in 10 diet-resistant obese subjects and in 80 obese subjects with no history of diet resistance.

Total energy expenditures and resting metabolic rates were not unusually low in the diet-resistant group. Instead, it was found that all members of this group under reported their actual food intake and over reported their physical activity.

The authors concluded that "failure to lose weight despite a self-reported low caloric intake can be explained by substantial mis-reporting of food intake and physical activity."

Interestingly, dieters on personalized weight loss plans do not make reporting errors to the same degree as dieters on traditional plans.

Steven W Lichtman et al, Discrepancy Between Self reported and Actual Caloric Intake and Exercise in Obese Subjects, New England J Medicine 327(27): 18931898 (31 Dec 1992).

As for the traditional diet plans, the list is endless. From rapid weight loss to poor nutrition, diets are to blame as much as dieters are to blame. But, once again, Personalized Weight Loss Plans eliminate this game and re-focus dieters on the real issue...losing weight.

Cutting to the chase, here is a table listing three things diets do and three things dieters do to sabotage weight loss strategies.

Diets	Dieters
Poor Nutrition -- Your body is already starving for essential nutrients it's not receiving from processed foods. Any diet must correct this deficiency. Weight loss is not from fat loss -- Healthy Weight Loss is defined by fat loss. To lose muscle and water weight in the process is the worse thing that can happen. Future weight gain is inevitable in this case. Weight loss focused -- There is too much emphasis on weight loss and not enough on preventing weight gain. Gaining weight is your real problem!	Bad habits keep them fat --Replace bad habits with good ones designed to keep you thin. Immediate gratification --Once and for all, get over this notion of rapid weight loss. It is bad for you and causes weight gain in the near future. A deep hatred of exercising --I hate it too. But too bad. Start moving!

Ways to Improve: Diets Many diet plans by design will cause weight gain once the dieter stops the diet. Diets should shift to Personalized Weight Loss Plans. Each individual plan should be designed in three phases: 1) *Weight control* -- The first phase stops the dieter's weight gain momentum and brings things under control. 2) *Weight Loss* -- The second phase is a slow process of fat loss to lose weight. The diet utilizes calorie composition, a healthier ratio of fats to proteins to carbohydrates, and exercise to slowly bring the dieter within an ideal weight range. 3) *Prevent Weight Gain* -- The last stage is easy if the first two were followed correctly. The slow weight loss stopped the body's natural counter-action to gain weight and the fat loss leaves the body in an increased metabolic state.

Ways to Improve: Dieters Read, Weight Loss Tips & Plans, if you haven't done so already.

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