So you’re panicking. You only get a few weeks time for fitting into your new dress, impressing a date or getting ready for beach season. You decide to try the latest diet fad gripping the nation and you think: What could possibly go wrong?
Hmmm. Plenty. Just because your favorite celebrity swear by it or just because a friend lost an enormous amount of weight doing some weeklong fast doesn’t guarantee it will work for you, too. Here are 6 indications that the diet book you saw gracing the bookstore’s bestseller shelf may be unworthy of your hard-earned dollar.
1. Unrealistic promise of quick weight loss
Almost all fad diets swear to make you drop the pounds faster than a drop of the hat, which is unrealistic at best and dangerous at worse. The recommended weight loss is only 1-2 pounds per week. Any rate that goes beyond that and you are exposing your body to dangerous health risks.
Even if you do drastically lose weight with your chosen fad diet during the first two weeks, that was just water weight, where you run the risk of losing muscle mass and slowing down your metabolism in response.
2. Centered on one particular "miracle" food
Fad diets usually overemphasize one particular food or food type, like grapefruit for the grapefruit diet, or cabbage, for the cabbage soup diet. While these foods are great when consumed with a greater variety of foods, they are not enough to meet your body’s nutritional needs when eaten alone.
3. Exercise? Nah!
Many fad and crash diets disregard the importance of regular physical activity in effective weight loss, and for this reason, fad diets should be debunked. Exercise is a vital component to a weight loss diet. There is no other successful formula for weight loss than proper diet and a good workout routine.
4. Offers a simplistic explanation to the complexity of weight gain
Many ‘experts’ and ‘gurus’ try and convince people that obesity and gaining weight comes from a singular reason. This gives them an angle at which to sell with, but whether they theorize obesity coming from excess carbs consumption, hormonal reasons or toxin accumulation– obesity is multifaceted.
5. Lists so-called forbidden foods
In order for your body to function properly, you need to eat foods from all the major food groups. So when your diet specifically forbids you to eat a particular food or food group, think twice. It may be doing your body more harm than good.
6. No concrete reviewed research to back up claims
Fad diet authors more than likely skip over and ignore scientific evidences just so they can parade around that the diet they have created is "100% safe" and effective.
Basically the only pro in the corner of fad diets is the fact that you can lose 10 pounds fast. But that weight won’t stay gone forever. It will come back soon. This is due to the fact fad diets contradict the guidelines for good nutrition. One truth these diet authors don’t tell you is that just like becoming overweight, weight loss is not something that happens overnight.
For more on fad diets check out:
- How Fad Diets Promise Quick Weight Loss
- Lose Weight Rapidly: Take Your Pick From Our Fad Diet List
- Facts About Popular Fad Diets That Work Fast
April 15, 2011
Weight Loss News