Fad Diets = Bad Diets

By Catherine Kelly

When does a fad seem absolutely ridiculous? When it comes in the form of a fad or crash diet!

These diets definitely hold creative merit, but are they worthwhile? Definitely not!

A list has been released detailing America's Top Fad diets and none of them ever mention eating healthy, balanced portions of food and taking everything in moderation.

The Super-High Protein Diet has recently hit Hollywood - meaning that for days on end, your diet includes copious amounts of meat, fish, shellfish, poultry, eggs, and cheese. Pasta, bread, and foods with large amounts of refined sugar are eliminated.

This is all very well except that often these foods are high in saturated fats, which mean the only weight you will lose is water. A moderate amount of protein-rich foods are wonderful as part of a balanced diet but otherwise this type of diet doesn't hold any good results.

Liquid Diets (one that consist of slimming shakes) have been around for a while now. These drinks are now containing most of the nutrients a healthy body needs but in a 'milkshake' form. These are ideal if you don't like chewing food (!) and that is about all.

You see while you may lose weight, as soon as you start back eating solids again it will most probably all reappear.

If you have an undying love for cabbage then the Cabbage Soup Diet is definitely for you.

It consists of eating a stew of cabbage, onion, capsicum, celery and tomato every day. You can gulp this down as much as you want, when you want. Once is enough for me!

This does not work as it enables fluid loss - but weight loss? Nay.

One diet that has become a Hollywood stalwart is the Grapefruit Diet. Established in the 1930s, this diets calls for eating grapefruit with little bits of protein and other vegetables thrown in, over three weeks. If the lack of food doesn't make you go crazy then your lack of energy would. This diet is still used today and the bad news is - it doesn't even work.

The Beverly Hills Diet doesn't include a house with a 90210 postcode, but maybe this diet was made up after someone thought that eating like a star meant you could be instantly transported to where all the stars live!

This diet offers a more variable selection of foods but is based on a theory around the times that you eat your carbohydrates and proteins.

Another aspect of the diet is the overloading of fruit after claims that fruit enzymes can burn up calories before they are deposited throughout your body.

If you love to follow set eating plans then you are much better consulting a dietician or doctor for a controlled eating plan that doesn't expect you to eat by unproven theories.

After all that, if you are wanting to undertake a balanced, nutritional diet for weight-loss purposes then you needn't submit yourself to unrealistic diets that offer no more than ideas.

Consulting a dietician about adopting a new, healthy eating plan is an ideal way to approach the issue. Denying yourself three meals a day is not necessary and you can look forward to results that last and make you feel a lot better - for life.

Links

The Food Files: Fad Diets
Fad Diet Plans
Fad Diet.com
If not dieting then what?