Margarethe De Clermont asked:


Crash diets don’t result in permanent weight loss and may be detrimental to your health.

Many sites on the internet claim that their diet results in significant weight loss in just three, four or five days. This type of weight loss is always transient. It is usually 90% water which will be put straight back on as soon as your body rehydrates, which it must do if you are not going to suffer severe health problems.

Most quick weight loss diets are merely fashionable for a short while; though they do make a lot of money for the inventor in associated product sales.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

1. Diets that promise quick and easy weight loss are usually based on eating more of one food type and none of another. These do not give the benefits that you would get from a balanced diet. They may suggest you take supplements but many supplements are not absorbed by the body unless they are taken along with the foods that the diet has banned. After a few weeks, if you stick to it that long, you may begin to develop nutritional deficiencies.

2. Fad diets are often boring and over restrictive. After the novelty of the first day or two, you will find that you do not enjoy your meals anymore. You will then start to crave comfort food constantly and will give up on your diet pretty soon after. You may even feel guilty, blaming yourself for not losing weight.

3. Most fad diets do not follow the recommendations of the American Heart Association regarding the fat levels in the diet. Often the diet will recommend high fat foods and low carbs which if taken long term, could result in heart disease. The promoters may tell you that the diet is only intended to be followed for a short time. But you probably will not reach your goal weight in that time, and then what? You either continue with a plan that is not good for your health, or stop and probably gain back what you lost.

4. Many fad diets do not help you to incorporate enough servings of fruits and vegetables in your weight loss program, nor do they give you the variety of foods that your body needs.

5. Quick weight loss diets are a temporary solution and do not help you to make permanent changes to your eating habits. Permanent changes are the only way to remain at your target weight once you reach it. Fad diets encourage yo-yo diet-binge cycles of fast weight loss and equally fast weight gain. This is worse for your health and your self esteem than if you had stayed overweight.

Self-hypnosis, especially if combined with NLP, is a very effective way of changing your unhealthy eating habits and addictions permanently. You can also use it to reduce stress levels (and comfort eating!) and to increase your self-confidence dramatically.

Whatever the hype may say, these diets will not be helpful in the long run. The best way to sustain weight loss is to eat a varied and healthy diet, do not overeat, exercise regularly and avoid rapid weight loss diets.

Mark Kimathi asked:


If you been fitting in a size 14 just fine and you fall head over heels over a designer size 8 dress you can try to use it as a weight loss goal. But you will probably end up feeling guilty, frustrated, and angry if you are not slinking around in it a month later.

More often than not, you will do much better setting smaller, achievable targets for yourself. If you must use the new-clothes strategy, go down a size at a time. And for obvious reasons, do not buy anything you have to take out a second mortgage to pay for.

You see, the disadvantages of huge short term targets is that if you continue to insist on losing weight fast, you will automatically end up incorporating fad diets or those that offer quick weight loss.

Though there are quick weight loss techniques, for most people they are ill-advised. Gradual weight loss will often suffice. Nippy weight loss tactics for people who want to be slimmer than what their body can provide are not recommended either.

The problem with most people is that they tend to opt for nippy fixes, though these things are not effective for them most of the time.

Today, there are plenty of quick weight-loss strategies that are guaranteed to backfire. This is because these nippy fixes instilled on many diet plans are, in reality, not efficient. This is because they do not employ the right principle and the right attitude in losing weight. The failures can be by design or simply ignorance.

Many times quick weight loss diet plans are known as fad diets because that is exactly what they are, just a fad. In time, when the fashion is over and popularity wanes down, people realize that the diet they have depended on is not reliable at all.

To know more about these fad diets that are selling like hotcake in the market today, here is a list of some telltale signs that would tell you not to try them even once.

1. Skipping a couple of meals

Abstaining from food completely is not a healthy habit. It may even cause some serious complications or problems especially for people who are sick with diabetes.

Skipping meals will only cause a hypoglycemia, or the condition where your blood sugar is really low. Also it will probably only be effective in making you eat twice as much at the next meal.

Does your diet plan require you to skip at least one meal? Then you probably have in your hands a fad diet.

2. Complete lack of exercises

Physical activity is a natural and crucial physiological process to the human body. It is important for the proper blood circulation and other activities of the human body system. Not to mention the preservation of muscle tissue that keeps your metabolism high.

Therefore, diet plans that do not require you to exercise are a nuisance. People are born to move.

On the other hand, exercises alone are not sufficient. Infact you are more likely to get results with diets alone rather than with exercises alone. Hence, it would be better if diet and exercise go hand-in-hand.

With these two points in mind there is no better time to start losing weight like now. If you want to really lose that excess fat, you have to lose weight now, just navigate around those ill-conceived quick weight loss diets.

Delaying tactics will not get you anywhere and will only make the problem worse. Infact if your diet plan suggests a certain time frame for you start losing weight, chances are, you are following the trend of a fad diet.

It is best to rely more on the way you feel than the tale of the tape. This means that if the weighing scale tells you that you are losing weight albeit slowly than you would like, but you are feeling energetic and positive about your weight-loss efforts, then, you are just doing fine.

As mentioned, it is worth mentioning all over again, weight loss in long run is not a quick process.

Robert Baird asked:


In case of attaining weight loss with fruitful results, it is advisable to indulge in a healthy diet. One of the most effective means of losing weight is by means of dieting. However it is to be borne in mind before indulging in a diet program that one must take suitable advice from an expert or a medical practitioner as all diet types may not suit the body type of an individual. Moreover, it is also necessary to remember that some of these diets may have harmful effects and thus proper research is advised.

The term ‘weight loss diet’ is often considered synonymous with the ‘Fad Diet’. These fad diets are extremely low in calories and they certify the consumption of certain selected liquid foods which have almost zero nutritional content. Some of the prominent fad diet foods include grapefruit diet and cabbage soup diets. It is to be noted here that researchers have dubbed this fad diet as extremely unhealthy and injurious to health as in the illusion of causing weight loss they actually reduce water content in the body which gives the dieter a false idea that he is losing weight. Once this diet is abandoned, the proportion of water loss is gained soon and thus the weight loss is transformed into weight gain. Therefore this weight loss diet is extremely ineffective.

However, there are a series of weight loss diets which are quite effective. These diets are balanced with suitable ingredient which lower weight but do not compromise with the energy level ad are also not harmful for the body. Such diets are rich in fruits and vegetables which act as preventives against diseases like heart attacks and cancer. Moreover, these low fat diets contain high proportions of carbohydrates along with moderate amounts of protein. Unlike the high protein and high carbohydrate content diets which are considered unhealthy, the low fat diets are recommended highly and are also used prevalently by athletes and sportspersons for improved performance levels. Moreover, the presence of complex carbohydrates in these diets are also extremely beneficial as they are very healthy and at the same time do not cause fattening. Therefore a perfect weight loss diet should comprise of a constant eating pattern, all forms of food groups and it is advisable for overweight individuals to ignore the various quick weight loss diet methods like fad diets, diet foods and hunger suppressants which cause more harm to the body than actually aiding in weight loss.

The Diet Guy asked:


Obesity is a physical state that refers to excessive body fat. Chances are you have experienced the frustrations of dieting at least once in your life, if you have problems with your weight. Close to a hundred million Americans go on a weight loss diet in any given year and up to ninety-five percent of them regain the weight they lose within five years. Worse, a third will gain back more weight than they lost, in danger of “yo-yoing” from one popular diet to another. The conventional approach to weight problems, focusing on fad weight loss diets or weight loss drugs, may leave you with just as much weight and the additional burden of ill health.

Today, an estimated sixty-five percent of all American adults are obese or overweight. Our culture obsesses about staying thin even as we grow fatter, but this isn’t about appearances. Obesity is known to be a precursor to many debilitating health conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, and gallbladder disease. Obesity contributes to as many as 375,000 deaths every year. In addition, the public health costs for obesity are staggering. According to researchers at Harvard University, obesity is a factor in 19% of all cases of heart disease with annual health costs estimated at 30 billion dollars; it’s also a factor in 57% of diabetes cases, with health costs of $9 billion per year.

Set Realistic Goals:

No doubt you have fallen for one or more of the weight loss diet schemes over the years, promising quick and painless weight loss. Many of these quick weight loss diet programs undermine your health, cause physical discomfort, flatulence, and ultimately lead to disappointment when you start regaining weight, shortly after losing it. Fad or quick weight loss diet programs generally overstress one type of food. They contravene the fundamental principle of good nutrition – to remain healthy one must consume a balanced diet, which includes a variety of foods. Safe, healthy, and permanent weight reduction is what’s truly lost among the thousands of popular diet schemes.

Some of the weight loss diet schemes reign supreme briefly, only to fade out. While some wane from popularity due to being unproductive or unsafe, some simply lose the public’s curiosity. Examples of such fad diets include the South Beach Diet, Atkins diet, the Grapefruit diet, Cabbage Soup diet, the Rotation diet, Beverly Hills diet, Breatharian, Ornish Plan – the list goes on and on. These fad diets advocate a specific technique (such as eliminating a certain food, or eating only certain combinations of foods) in conjunction with the basic idea that the body makes up the difference in energy by breaking down and utilizing some part of itself, essentially converting matter into energy. This self-cannibalism, or catabolism as it is referred, typically starts with breakdown of stored body fat.

jennygirl asked:


I know people say fad diets don’t work, but there have to be a few that really do.

Sam R asked:


Only anwsers from people that have actually done the diets and they have worked. How hard were they? What do they involve? How much weight did you lose? and how fast did it work? Thank you in advance!

Louie asked:


The Atkins diet is definitely unhealthy, but are there any other fad diets out there that work? I need to lose some weight, and I’ve tried a few of the diets out there, but most of them have made me into an even bigger fat stinking hog. Are there any that work?