Maybe what’s really going on is that following a diet, any diet, causes you to pay more attention to the foods you’re eating—to engage in mindfulness—and that’s where their effectiveness is, not in the particulars. In this respect, all diets involve some kind of lifestyle change. People on a diet typically increase their physical activity at the same time, and that is likely to be a much more important lifestyle change than the actual composition of the foods one eats.
