It’s that time of year again when the fad diets are flying around! ‘you can lose a stone in 7 days’, ‘lose 10lbs in 5 days’. We have all heard them.
There are a lot of ‘fad diets’ knocking about, Lighterlife, Herbalife the Cambridge diet, Slimfast, Juice diets etc.
Now the question is do they work? Well here is my answer to this……..
The Cadbury Creme Egg Diet!!
If you replaced your current daily food intake with 3 Cadbury creme eggs per day you would lose weight, so, in theory, the creme egg diet works for weight loss, therefore you could add it to the list of ‘fad diets’.
Though what has swapping your meals for creme eggs done in terms of your overall health or educating you on proper nutrition and exercise to help you maintain a lower body fat?…..absolutely nothing!!
Dangerously Low Calories
So that’s all the fad diets are doing to help you lose weight, they replace your meals with dangerously low-calorie bars and shakes that work for weight loss simply because they lower your overall calorie intake, there are no special ingredients in them that are helping your weight loss!
For more sustainable weigh loss you can work out your reccommended calorie intake.
‘Fake Weight Loss’!
The weight loss is through muscle wastage, the muscles being depleted of carbohydrates and less food going through the system.
Some of the worst fad diets make you go to the toilet a lot more, therefore, you lose more weight as less water is now in the body causing you to be dehydrated! These diets cause ‘fake weight loss’!
What Happens When You Stop the Fad Diet?!
Well because of the dangerously low-calorie intake that you’ve been consuming you’ve wasted away a large amount of your muscle tissue and drastically slowed down your metabolic rate making it now much easier for your body to gain fat!
Added to the fact because you’ve not learned anything from these programs regarding correct nutrition and exercise.
You now have no clue what to eat, so you go back to your old eating habits which made you gain weight in the first place!
So now you’re back to your old eating habits, have a slower metabolic rate and less muscle tissue, you will end up putting more weight on than before you started the fad diet as the picture below illustrates.
Focus on the Long Term
So do yourself a favor, and do the only thing that works for a long-term healthier, better-looking figure/physique and a lower body fat percentage that you can maintain long term.
Partake in regular exercise with correct nutrition!
For sustainable weight loss check out my blog, 5 Simple Tips for Weight Loss.
If you are interested in how I can help you achieve sutstainable weight loss through Nutrition Consultancy please feel free to get in touch.
If you are based in the North Birmingham area or Birmingham city centre please take a look at my Personal Training services.
