Why Fad Diets Don’t Work…and What Will

There are more than a million reasons why you may want to lose weight. There are also more than a million ways to go about weight loss. Over the years, countless fad diets have cropped up promising fast results. The problem is that those results are short-lived. For healthy, lasting weight loss, you’re better served going about it the old-fashioned way: healthy eating and exercise.

What Is a Fad Diet?

A fad diet is a type of diet that promises fast weight loss without exercising. Fad diets focus only on what you can or cannot eat. Although many fad diets claim to help you lose fat, most of these diets only help you shed excess water. Your body composition does not change, and water can quickly be retained, so you bounce back to your pre-diet weight (or heavier).

Common Fad Diets (and What’s Wrong with Them)

Some fad diets are easy to spot, like the Cabbage Soup Diet. In this diet, you are supposed to eat cabbage soup (a low-calorie meal) two to three times per day for one week. Your soup meals may be complemented by other low-calorie foods.

The Downside: the cabbage soup diet will help you lose some weight because it is a very low-calorie diet. However, because this diet involves very little protein, in just one week, you can begin to lose muscle mass (read on to find out why that’s counterproductive to long-term weight loss). Also, cabbage eaten in the amounts this diet calls for is likely to cause some uncomfortable (and possibly embarrassing) bloating and gas. Even if you weigh less, bloating can make you feel like you’re actually gaining weight because your clothes may fit a little more snuggly.

Other fad diets may be harder to spot because they seem healthy. Take for instance:

The Raw Food Diet

The Raw Food Diet calls for eating only raw food, claiming that cooking leaches nutrients from fruits and vegetables.

The Downside:
There are a number of drawbacks to this fad diet. First, the nutrients in some vegetables become more bio-available by cooking. Second, if taken to the extreme, people may ingest raw meat, and the human digestive system is not well equipped for that…not to mention, it increases the likelihood of food poisoning and other infections, such as E. coli and salmonella. Third, to stick to this diet, your life is temporarily taken over by food preparation—cleaning, cutting, juicing, dehydrating, etc. all your fruits and vegetables.

The Master Cleanse

The Master Cleanse can be done a number of ways—with or without fasting, for instance—but all versions include ingesting natural diuretics, such as lemon juice, maple syrup, cayenne pepper, etc. The theory behind the Master Cleanse is to detoxify your body and give your liver and kidneys (your body’s detoxification powerhouses) a boost.

The Downside:
While detoxifying sounds like a good idea, when cleanses are done without proper preparation and/or medical monitoring, you can throw off your electrolytes. As a result, you may become dehydrated or retain water and experience tissue swelling.

The 5-Bite Diet

This fad diet is easy to follow: skip breakfast, and for lunch and dinner, eat whatever you want, but only five bites (total) per meal. This diet significantly reduces calorie intake.

The Downside:
Because this diet cuts down calorie intake so drastically, you are likely to lose muscle. You’re also likely to get very hungry and binge. In any case, this fad diet is not likely to help you develop healthy eating habits or make good nutritional choices because when limited to only five bites, most people will opt for calorie-packed, sugar- and/or fat-laden goodies.

Like we said before, these diets may help you shed a few pounds in a few days. But in the few days after you’ve stopped the diet, you’re likely to be right back where you started.

The Best Way to Lose Weight

There is no shortcut to healthy, sustained weight loss—it takes developing a lifestyle that supports regular exercise and healthy, balanced nutrition.

At ICWA, we are here to help jumpstart your new lifestyle with exercise instruction and motivation. We can start before you even walk in the gym by giving you the facts about the benefits of exercise:

• Exercise builds muscle, and muscle requires more calories to sustain than fat. That means when you’re fit, at rest, your body burns more calories.
• The increased basal metabolic rate that results from exercise helps you feel more energized—all day, every day (and especially on days you workout).
• Exercising at the gym or as part of a weightlifting group provides a new social circle and weight loss support system.

So, what are you waiting for? Visit ICWA to start a fitness class or work with a personal trainer and get on the path to healthy, sustained weight loss.