less people dieting

According to a recent news article, even though our society is totally fat phobic and food obsessed, only 16 percent of the population is dieting.

Frankly, I don't believe this statistic for a second.

What is happening is that LESS people are ADMITTING to dieting. Calling restricting calories (to lose or maintain weight) by other names is very much in vogue these days.

For instance if you ask most people, "Are you dieting" they will probably answer "OH no!" (perish the thought). But if you go on to ask them "well, do you 'watch what you eat'?", their answer will be opposite. "Definitely... yes have to do that!" and of course "watching what you eat" is another way of saying dieting.

We haven't stopped dieting - we are dieting more than ever (of course, another no brainer). We have just stopped CALLING it a diet.

Weightwatchers restricts most people to 23-26 points a day even on maintenance but they never call it a diet. It's "staying on program" or "lifestyle change" Jenny Craig and other mainstream programs have pretty much followed Weight Watchers in their terminology so now, the only ones which CALL themselves a diet are the liquid diets etc. And that's probably what explains the 16 percent in the new study.