Diets are extremely hard to follow for any length of time. The reason for this is because dieting opposes the basic human desire to maximize pleasure and minimize pain. It's normal for a human being to want to eat good food and eat until they are satisfied. And dieting opposes these needs. That's why most people don't last too long on a diet, no matter what type of diet they are on. After a period of time in which you sacrifice and eschew your favorite foods in your preferred quantities, your natural "pleasure" urge kicks in and you say, "forget this"! As a result, most diets just don't work!
Sure, they work for a while. Diets work for as long as you can deny your urges to eat the foods that you want. But, sooner or later, the urge to eat satisfying and rich foods becomes too strong. Dieters start to cheat a little here and there, and pretty soon the number on the scale starts to creep back up towards the number that prompted them to start a diet in the first place. It all boils down to satisfaction and the pleasure/pain principle. The longer you restrict your food choices and avoid the foods that make you feel happy and satisfied, the greater your pain and the greater your frustration. The urge to eat and be happy starts to build, and that urge soon begins to overpower your desire to stay on a diet and lose weight. The urge to eat "real” food in “real” quantities becomes too strong and you give in. That's normal human nature: to maximize pleasure and minimize pain!
And that's why diets just don't work in the long-term. Diets are too disruptive to the pleasure/pain principle, and dieting causes tremendous frustration in not being able to satisfy your basic human urge to eat. And that's where a person has to make a decision. Is the end result of a diet worth the struggle and frustration that it causes? Is it worth the struggle to deny yourself the foods that you covet just so you can achieve a certain number on a scale? Are you willing to give up your preferred method of eating for the rest of your life in exchange for a flat stomach? That's the equation that has to be worked out for a person who is contemplating the pros and cons of being on a diet. For a diet to be successful, it has to be something that you can live with for the majority of your days.
But the trick is to find some sort of a balance between the pleasure/pain equation. Most diets disrupt that equation too much, thereby rendering the majority of diets ineffectual and unsustainable!
