So you tried a diet and it didn’t work out. Don’t let it get you down

Editor’s note: As we enter 2023, we’re running a series of stories in Star Culture on diet and nutrition, navigating eating healthier amid rising food costs and advice on making sustainable choices.

New research on diets and weight loss from York University suggests that the adage is true: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. At least for women.

Last fall, Jennifer Kuk, a professor at York’s school of kinesiology and health science, published the results of a study that examined the weight loss efforts of over 9,000 women who were clients at the Wharton Medical Clinic. What Kuk and her co-authors discovered, was that, in their time at the clinic, women with a greater history of weight loss — even if it was eventually regained — showed a modestly greater weight loss than first-timers.

Although we often think of a lifetime of trying to lose weight as a problematic pattern of worsening cycles, this research could make it possible to reframe repeated weight-loss history as practice, as opposed to failures.

It’s not clear why, exactly, but maybe it’s as simple as any other task. We have to allow ourselves to be bad at something before we can learn to become good at it.

“Anecdotally, I can say that when I’m speaking to patients who are trying to lose weight for the first time, there’s a lot to learn,” said Kuk. “Learning calories is like speaking another language. And then there’s fat content, carbohydrate content and protein, so it makes sense…