6 Ways to Spot a Fad Diet
Nowadays everyone wants to lose weight by going on some miracle diet that will turn their life around. Because so many people are looking for this miracle diet, a plethora of fad diets have appeared on the market all guaranteeing to change your life phenomenally. While some diets can actually yield life-changing results in a healthy way, others offer only false promises. This raises the question of how to determine the fad diets from the real diets. Listed below are six ways to spot a fad diet.
#1 The Diet Stresses that Exercise or Lifestyle Changes are Not Necessary
Your lifestyle directly affects your ability to lose weight, and a comprehensive weight loss diet both recognizes and incorporates this. Factors such as the amount of sleep you get, the amount of stress you have, and the amount of exercise you do need to be taken into consideration when deciding on a diet. If a diet claims that you will lose weight regardless of these things, it is probably a fad.
#2 The Diet is Extremely Low in Fat or Cuts Carbs Completely
While limiting your fat and carbohydrate intake can be beneficial, limiting these things too much can actually prevent you from losing weight. For starters, whole grain breads combined with a certain amount of fruits and vegetables is actually a key component in losing weight. Also, certain types of fats are considered to be healthy fats and it has been found that those consuming healthy fats burn more fat than those who do not. The key here is portion control and knowing how to properly balance your fat and carbohydrate intake.
#3 The Diet Promises Rapid Results
Healthy weight loss takes time. There’s just no way around that fact. Dropping too much weight too soon is not healthy, nor is it sustainable weight loss. Generally, you will lose the most amount of weight towards the beginning of the program, however this will eventually slow down. A healthy amount of weight loss is about 2-3 lbs a week. Although this type of weight loss takes more time, it will yield longer-lasting results.
#4 The Diet is Starving You
Some diets advocate only eating 600-800 calories per day as opposed to the recommended 2,000 calories per day.Although this may yield weight loss at first, this will not last long term. Furthermore, if the body feels like it is being starved, this will cause it to store more fat instead of dropping weight. Ultimately, starvation has the opposite of the desired effect.
#5 The Diet Claims You Can Eat Whatever You Want
Opposite of the diet that starves you is the one that claims you can eat anything and still lose weight. That clearly doesn’t work or we would have no need for diets. Diets that promote this usually have an extensive exercise program or only allow you to eat whatever you want for one day out of the week with a very restricted diet the rest of the week.
#6 The Diet Claims to Work For Everyone
There is no one diet that works perfectly for every person. Each person has their own individual dietary needs and these need to be taken into account when choosing the right diet. Diets that claim to be a “one size fits all” are almost always fad diets.
