3 Top Reasons Fad Diets Don’t Work

There isn’t a person on Earth who hasn’t been seduced at one time or another by the fad diet. The thought of losing a lot of weight immediately, with hardly any effort, always sounds appealing. Sadly the truth is that if it doesn’t take any effort at all, it probably won’t work, and here’s why;

1. No Pain No Gain

In reality, if you want to lose weight you are going to have to be hungry. There are ways you can reduce this hunger, and there are plenty of ways you can distract yourself from it, but if any diet promises to allow you to lose a lot of weight without even being hungry it is definitely a lie. For your body to begin to burn up its own fat supply it literally has to be hungry, so if you’ve ever tried to follow a diet that promised remarkable weight loss without any unpleasant sensations then that’s probably why. You just weren’t hungry.

If, on the other hand, the weight does slide off, it’s likely that you are following a diet that isn’t giving you your essential nutrients. The less you eat the slower your metabolism goes and the less you’ll feel hungry, so certain diets may well allow you to completely avoid the sensation of hunger while effectively starving you at the same time. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll actually lose weight, and if you do, it’s unlikely to stay off once you return to a normal diet.

It follows from this that if you slow down your metabolism to such a degree that you can survive on one corn flake a day, when you begin to eat normal meals again (as you will have to, in order to survive!) you’ll find that you immediately put on a lot of weight. You may even find yourself heavier than you were in the first place. This is the type of scenario that can cause yo-yo dieting, where people begin to believe that the only way to lose weight is to starve themselves, but because this is unsustainable they always have to return to eating normally, which immediately causes them to put on weight, and so on.

2. You Should Never Hate Your Diet

I have honestly never met a single person who has lost weight permanently by following a ‘diet.’ When I say ‘diet’ I mean a pre-designed meal-plan for weight loss. Weight loss can only happen if you begin to actually enjoy and relish a healthy diet and stop craving unhealthy foods such as fat, sugar and salt. The cravings for these foods usually only comes from addiction, so once you stop eating them you’ll soon find that they lose their appeal and you begin to find other tastes interesting once again.

Enough Fad Diets Already!

There isn’t a person on Earth who can continue eating a diet they don’t enjoy, so if you’re not enjoying your healthy meal plan you’re doing something wrong. Healthy eating really shouldn’t be bland at all, it should be the very opposite!  Once you begin eating healthily, your tastes will change so that you no longer find excessive sugars, salts and fats appealing.

Fad diets, on the other hand, can be very limiting, boring and sometimes downright disgusting. They give the false idea that in order to be slim, you must deny yourself, and suggest that eating healthy means eating bland foods. This almost always means that people return to their bad habits immediately at the end of a fad diet.

3. Losing Weight Is About Exercise

If you really want to lose weight, you have to put the effort in. This is especially true if you’d rather not cut out certain calorific foodstuffs. While fad diets promise to allow you to lose weight while doing nothing at all and noticing no hunger, in reality this is unnatural and unhealthy. If you lose weight without exercising, your metabolism will slow down. This means that you will have to continue eating almost nothing (and being in a state of constant hunger) or you risk putting all of your weight back on. It also means that you will feel lethargic, confused, and perhaps anxious or depressed.

Exercise, on the other hand, encourages the release of endorphins in your brain and reduces the negative effects of the stress hormone, cortisol. Regular exercise increases your metabolism so that even when you’re not exercising, you’ll still be burning more calories than you did before. Regular exercise means that you can eat more without putting on weight, and means that you’ll be happier, healthier and more energetic overall.

The easiest way to get exercise on a regular basis is to install some gym equipment in your home. An elliptical machine, for example, will allow you exercise various different muscle groups in the privacy of your own home while simply watching television or listening to music. For some quality training machines, look up Schwinn elliptical trainers or Yowza elliptical trainerson Google.

Overall, if a diet seems too good to be true, it probably is. The key to losing weight permanently is not in making a temporary change to your diet or lifestyle, but in accepting that you need to make permanent changes to stay in shape. Always remember that these permanent changes to your lifestyle aren’t just about losing weight, they’re about feeling great too.