The Way Out Recovery SCV officials are talking about the dangers of dieting with Sheri Barke, a registered dietician, eating disorder specialist and sports, nutrition and wellness expert.

“New Year’s is upon us,” said Bob Sharits, program director at The Way Out Recovery SCV, during the latest “The Way Out Recovery Hour” on KHTS. “Some of us, we set ourselves up for disappointment with New Year’s resolutions right? We want to eat better and we want to exercise more.”

Instead of working toward a healthy lifestyle change over time, many people go on an extremely restrictive, temporary diet, which Barke calls “a four letter word.”

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“I really don’t like diets, and I use a non-diet approach in my practice,” she said. “The reason for that is, so many people are on their New Year’s diets and they want to lose weight, and they do these crazy restrictive things, but the fact of the matter is that 85 percent of people that lose weight on a diet will regain that weight.”

Research shows that depriving yourself of certain foods actually increases your risk for binge eating, and that dieting tends to distort people’s relationship with food, according to Barke.

“People are either on or off their diet — it’s very black and white. They’re either being good or they’re being bad, they’re either eating clean or they’re cheating,” Barke explained.

When a dieter has what Barke called an “all or nothing mindset” and they find themselves faced with a host of “forbidden food” at a party or social event, the desire for that food goes up even higher.

“We try to resist, but what happens when we tell ourselves we can’t have something? We want it more — the urge goes up, the value of that food goes up,” Barke said. “We fight and we resist and we try, but when we finally give in and we have even one bite … (we say,) ‘I’ve already blown my diet. Now I had that one piece, I might as well go to In N’ Out and have a double double and then go have pizza later and then have everything else that I’m not allowed, because starting tomorrow, I’m going to start my diet again.’”

In fact, studies have shown that kids, teens and adults who go on extreme diets tend to be even fatter than when they started five years later, according to Barke.

In addition, Barke noted that 35 percent of people who start on a normal diet will progress to pathological disordered eating, with women who diet 18 times more at risk of developing a clinical eating disorder like anorexia or bulimia than women who don’t.

“There’s a lot of negative effects of restrictive eating,” she said. “We restrict our life when we go on diets. You restrict your social opportunities, you restrict your opportunity to have pleasure and it triggers more anxiety and guilt and shame, so it actually hurts your mental health.”

To find out four ways to make a healthy lifestyle change for the new year instead of dieting, listen to the full podcast of “The Way Out Recovery Hour” on KHTS or watch the YouTube video above.

Ed. Note: This article is a KHTS Community Spotlight based on the latest “The Way Out Recovery Hour” on KHTS AM-1220.

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