Weight Loss Diets

For anyone who has had a never ending battle with the bulge, weight loss diets are a godsend. Or a nightmare, depending on your perspective! Ask anyone who has ever been on a weight loss diet and you will get a mixed bag of reactions. While some will vouch for their specific diet plan, others will pooh pooh all weight loss diets and call them fanciful or useless.

But the fact remains that if you intend to burn that fat, a weight loss diet is your best bet.

Over the years, weight loss diets have become an industry in their own right. If one were to track the genesis of weight loss diets, the seventies would be a great place to start. For this is when the first of the weight loss diets made an appearance. Decades of stable economy coupled with an increased earning capacity and standard of living gave most Americans the traditional symbol of prosperity – an expanding midriff. And for those who were image conscious, the very first weight loss diets were created.

Since weight loss diets were concocted mostly at home, and included instructions on what not to eat rather than what to eat, the industry (if you can call it that) was not very successful. You must remember that this was an age when food, diets and nutrition had still to become key areas with qualified professionals offering advice.

Typically, it was the lady of the house who was supposed to keep a check on the bulge around her man’s midriff and she did this by doing away with or slowly but steadily eliminating known weight gaining foods. Nutrition and balanced weight loss diets were still unknown as yet.

It was in the early eighties however that weight loss diets became a full-fledged institution. By now, the battle against the bulge had become a real enough health issue for governments and healthcare providers to sit up and take notice. The census and healthcare figures of this period reveal that nearly one out of every four Americans was clinically obese. And weigh loss diets and practitioners literally began crawling out of the woodwork to set shop. This was the time when numerous fads emerged.

There were some weight loss diets that encouraged vegetarianism. Others like the Atkins weight loss diet plan promoted eating of meet, but disallowed starch and carbohydrates. Some other weight loss diets promoted fresh fruits and vegetables exclusively while still others eschewed everything that contributed to excess calories. This was an era when calorie counters emerged and weight loss diets became synonymous with body fat analysis and lean muscle weight.

Being clinically obese, I too experimented with several weight loss diets in the hope that they would whack me into shape. But the truth of the matter is that no weight loss diet, no matter how extreme, will ever work without a healthy dose of exercise. Sitting on the couch, not eating may help you lose weight, but will surely leave you weakened and unhealthy. But an effective weight loss diet coupled with regular, calorie-burning exercise will do wonders for your metabolism.

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