Fad Diets and Permanent Weight Loss
One of the favorite temptations of fad diets is that they guarantee fast weight loss. Who doesn’t wish to lose weight as speedily as possible? But are there any fad diets that work? Or are they all typically ineffective?
Virtually all fad diets will “work” – in other words they are going to force your body to drop several pounds in a short period of time.
The more significant question to ask is, will they work PERMANENTLY? And the answer’s no.
Fad diets simply don’t work long term, for two reasons:
First, it’s not possible to stick to them for very long. Can you imagine living the rest of your life eating nothing except cabbage soup or scrambled eggs? You may be able to manage a week or 2, but after that you’ll start to get truly weary of the limited food options and give up. Or you can start cheating so your weight loss stops, and then you will quit. Either way, you will not stick to the diet for long – and who can blame you?
The second reason fad diets do not work long term is often because you will potentially return to your former eating habits the instant you quit the trend diet. If you spent two weeks after a trend diet and lost 10 pounds, those 10 pounds are going to come back quickly once you start to eat french fries, burgers, chocolate shakes, candy, cookies, and potato chips again.
Actually don’t be stunned if you gain more weight than you lost on the fad diet, because now you have probably slowed down your metabolic rate even worse than it was. You may also find yourself eating far more than you did before the fad diet as you felt so deprived and now you are overcome with never-ending cravings for all the foods you missed.
So yes, in principle there are fad diets that work, although not for long. Is it valuable to follow a trend diet? Potentially not.
HealthStatus.com has more than 30 free tools you can use to assess your health including a basal metabolic rate calculator (bmr) and a how to lose weight fast calculator.
December 14 2011 10:38 pm | Fad Diets & Weight Loss Myths