How To Spot a Fad Diet

We’ve all heard of them, some of us may have even tried a few. How can you resist the lure of “losing inches in days”, “dropping ten pounds without dieting or exercising” or “guaranteed weight loss or your money back”? As a general rule if it seems too good to be true...it is.

Why fad diets don’t work:
Humans evolved by exerting a lot of energy to obtain relatively few calories. So there was an evolutionary advantage to holding onto energy as fat when times were plentiful and using it up slowly when times were lean. Today we exert very little energy to obtain many calories; we don’t even need to get out of our cars when getting meals at restaurants- the food is brought right to our window! It’s no wonder that two out of three Americans are overweight. 

When we lose weight healthfully (slowly) we lose fat and some of the muscle we needed to carry that extra fat around. When weight is lost too rapidly (more than 1-2 pounds/week) we often lose muscle at too fast a pace, leaving the metabolically less active and unsightly fat behind. So while the scale may read a lower number for as long as you can maintain the rigors of a fad diet, the “right” weight (fat) is not coming off. Once you’re off the diet and your eating goes back to normal, weight is regained as fat which is layered on top of the fat your didn’t remove last time. This is one of the reasons that over time we have a harder and harder time losing weight. 

How to spot a fad diet: 

• One whole food group (like carbohydrates) is eliminated or drastically reduced
• Too much emphasis on just one food, think of the cabbage soup diet or the grapefruit diet- whomp, whomp
• The promoters of the diet emphasize weight loss of more than two pounds/week
• There is no science to back up the claims. Hint: A trick often employed is to promote “testimonials” of actors who claim this diet worked for them
• It sounds too good to be true!

What you can do to lose weight healthfully and permanently: 

• Increase your fruit and vegetable intake to feel fuller on fewer calories
• Practice mindful eating: are you eating because your stomach is hungry or because your mind is hungry? Can you even tell the difference?
• Keep a Food Journal, recording intake is one of the best ways to assess your current habits, manage your portions and develop accountability.
• Move! (per your physicians recommendations). The recommendations from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is to engage in approximately 60 minutes of moderate- to vigorous-intensity activity on most days of the week. And to sustain weight loss in adulthood the recommendation is to : participate in at least 60 to 90 minutes of daily moderate-intensity physical activity.