"Diets don't work": What dietitians (and others) do and don't mean

“Diets don’t work” has become a popular refrain among the people over the last decade. I love it, dietitians love it, psychologists love it, even academics love it. But then we have some other professionals whom I also love and respect, like Stronger by Science podcasters Greg Nuckols and Eric Helms, who have called the phrase “diets don’t work” a “myth.” Then there are even more extreme ends of the “diets don’t work” spectrum. There are rage-baiters on one end saying “calories aren’t real,” and rage-baiters on the other end saying “nothing matters except calories.”

Whom to believe? Is all anarchy and chaos? Does what we eat matter or not? Is life but a walking shadow who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury? Or are all of us individually to blame for not remaining perfectly trim on our exact regimen of three Snickers bars per day?