I needed to check the trends of something on Google Trends, but for some strange reason before I typed my term I typed “weight loss diet” instead.. and the result was.. well, very interesting the least.
Here is a screen shot of what I saw for the “Weight loss diet” Google search from 2004 to now (below I will embed the actual charts since seeing all the details from this picture is kind of difficult):
Now, let’s look at the top chart. First of all you see a trend, right? A cycle. Now, notice the “lows” in each cycle. Guess what.. These are the “December” months each year since 2004. In November and December people (especially in the developed world) celebrate Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, etc. and no body cares about weight loss or even weight gain at that time of the year. And, this is not something I’m saying. It’s evident on the image!
And, now look at the “highs”. Guess what? These are the “January” each year! Does “New Years resolution” ring a bell? Wow! It repeats every year. We spend the last six weeks (and this is proven now) each year getting fatter and the January’s each year trying to figure out how to fix the damage!
Now, look at the bottom left. These are the countries with the most searches (Google Trends calls it “Regional interest”):
I find this very interesting… and telling. We don’t learn from history. We repeat the same thing every year. It happens with many, many things in life… but, evidently it happens with weight gain/loss.
People go careless with their diet and health at year-end and then spend the beginning months of each year trying to figure out how to recover from the mess they’ve created for themselves… in a cyclical manner… year after year after year after year…