Crazy Fad Diets And Why They Don’t Work

You’ve got to admit that the diet industry is very imaginative when it comes to diets. The hotdog and ice cream diet, the grapefruit diet, the popcorn diet… we’ve really seen it all.

With each crazy new fad diet, the hopes of numerous people are raised and then dashed. We want a quick fix, and expect instant results. We might feel good about ourselves for a while. But most of these diets aren’t sustainable for the long term and that’s where the problem lies. They may even be harmful to our health.

Why FAD Diets Don’t Work

There’s a difference between healthy diets and fad diets. Healthy diets encourage slow, gradual, sustainable weight loss by following a balanced, nutritious eating plan.

On the other hand, fad dieting is usually about severely restricting calorie intake in an effort to get quick results. A surefire sign of a fad diet is one which promises rapid weight loss.

What they don’t tell you is that most of the weight loss is water which is gained back quickly when you ‘go off’ the diet.

Some fad diets ‘ban’ entire food groups such as carbohydrates in the belief that they are ‘bad’, leading to nutrient deficiencies, cravings, hunger and a higher risk of giving in to binging.

Other diets skip entire meals for days on end, like breakfast, or dinner. When you bore of your strict eating regime or even start to feel weak and ill, you throw your hands up in the air and go back to your previous eating style.

Have you noticed that when you go on a quick-fix diet you might enjoy some weight loss but when you come off it, you usually put all the weight back on and more?

Not only is most rapid weight loss due to loss of water, fad dieting actually has a negative effect on metabolism. If you suddenly decrease the amount of calories that you eat, your smart and wise body will try to keep you alive by slowing down its metabolism.

Your body doesn’t know that YOU want to lose weight. It will simply believe that something is wrong – maybe you’re trapped somewhere without food in a cave somewhere, or stuck in a snowstorm.

It will try to help out by slowing down the rate at which it burns calories, because suddenly it thinks they’re in short supply.

In a fantasy world, you could say to your body: look, I’m going to give you 1000 fewer calories a day for a while but there’s nothing to worry about because there’s no famine going on. I just want you to get the extra energy you need by using the fat on my stomach and thighs!

But in the real world, if your body needs 2000 calories a day to survive, and you suddenly give it only 1000, it won’t burn off the 1000 calories worth of cells that you have sitting on your love handles.

Instead, your body will try and get as much energy out of those 1000 calories as possible by slowing its metabolism down, because it doesn’t want to waste anything.

Physically, you’ll feel more tired because your body is being very miserly with energy, and will devote its 1000 calorie ration to essential systems, like blood and oxygen supply (and others).

Metabolically, you won’t be burning off extra calories. In fact, you can actually gain weight by dramatically reducing your calorie intake. This is because when you increase calories again – highly likely after getting tired and hungry on a fad diet - your body will have to deal with the extra calories via a slower metabolic engine.

Your metabolism slows down even further because “when very little food is eaten, the body begins to break down muscle to meet energy needs.

Unfortunately, this occurs much more readily than the breakdown of fat stores. Breaking down muscle leads to a loss of water, creating the illusion of rapid weight loss.

So instead of losing fat on a crash diet, you’re actually losing muscle (the last thing you want to do) and water. It’s actually possible to diet yourself fatter.

The extra weight gain may then provoke another bout of crash dieting, further dampening metabolic rate. This explains why each new crash diet seems to bring fewer results.

It’s taken me a while to realize that’s there’s no point in dieting. On the other hand, that doesn’t give me a license to eat whatever I want, whenever I want. That simply isn’t possible!

It’s about taking a long-term view of eating healthily, watching the amount of food I eat, what I eat, and eating regularly enough to nourish my body.
Remember, it’s more about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ habits rather than ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods.