The headline du jour on all the diet news stories is: “Diets Don’t Work.”

Instead, they say you should eat less and exercise more.

Huh? Isn’t that a diet?

Here’s what I think doesn’t work…

• Fad diets that restrict your calories too severely. Starvation, anyone?
• Diets that don’t let you eat from all the food groups. I know the low-carb dieters will disagree with me on that one. But if they stay on the diet long-term, I think they’ll find they’ve modified it so much that it isn’t truly low-carb any longer.
• Diets that expect you to give up all your bad habits at once and follow perfect eating and exercising habits. No one’s perfect. So that one’s destined to fail.
• Diets that don’t allow you to snack. I’ve noticed that more and more weight loss programs are beginning to allow controlled cheating. I guess they’re finally catching on.
• Diets that are just too darn hard. If you spend every moment of your life analyzing what you eat, when do you get to enjoy life?

And the list could go on and on.

There is no one diet that works for everyone. But I think people deserve better than a headline like “Diets Don’t Work.”

To just let the obesity epidemic continue is unhealthy. There has to be some answer to it.

I realize people will think I have a vested interest in saying that diets do work. But I actually believe most don’t for the reasons I listed above.

That’s why I created my own.

But I also don’t believe for a minute that everyone should be on my diet. It will work for some people and not for others.

In fact, I plan to talk about that subject in a future post — how to determine what type of diet will fit your lifestyle and your personality.

I think the most important factor is whether you can live with your new eating habits for a lifetime. If you can’t, the diet won’t work for you.

That’s why my diet doesn’t have a separate maintenance plan. Because either your eating habits work or they don’t.

But that’s not news. That’s common sense.

So what do you think? Do diets work? Yes or no?

If no diet works, then what do you suggest? And why do you think your suggestion will work for everyone?

Or do you think we just have to live with obesity?