Diets fail 80-95% of the time
Almost any diet will make you lose weight short-term, but they have an 80-95% failure rate after one year as people regain the weight.
Snapshot · Modern Wisdom
Something Is Very Wrong With Modern Life - Arthur Brooks - #1109
Explore episode
Jun 11, 2026
Where this was said
Why Are Directionless People So Fragile?
At 36:33 · chapter starts 36:07
Without coherence there is no sense of agency. Without direction there can be no progress. The diet industry illustrates the arrival fallacy perfectly: 80-95% failure rates because the goal has an end.
$40 billion diet industry that fails
The US diet industry is worth $40 billion yet fails roughly nine out of ten times, epitomising the arrival fallacy.
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