I would see things like:
“Grape fruit diet!! Makes you lose weight fast!”
“The new hot dog diet!”
“Eat all the chocolate you want and get thin!”
I thought they were funny back then. Honestly now I see them as dumb.
The thing is these fad diets do work. How? Why you ask???
Let’s look at a normal American’s daily diet. I’ll use my family as an example:
Morning: Breakfast is usually a bowl of cereal
Lunch: Sandwich, chips and fruit or maybe a hot dog and chips
Afternoon: a small snack
Supper: typical American family supper could be spaghetti with meat, a crock pot meal, pizza as a treat, fast food, just good old home cooking
Plus at times dessert follows lunch and supper.
Well now let’s say you follow like the chocolate diet. You are told you can eat all the chocolate you want!! Sounds to good to be true! Chocolate for breakfast, lunch, dinner plus snacks!!! Yum!!!
So your typical chocolate diet meal would maybe go like this:
Breakfast: Chocolate milk with a candy bar
Lunch: chocolate covered strawberries with a chocolate shake
Snack: bag of M&M’s
Supper: Chocolate doughnuts
Now if you compare the two calorie wise you are eating less calories with the chocolate diet so you will lose weight. Plus to much chocolate will get your bowels moving. Maybe a little too much.
The same goes with the grapefruit diet or any other FAD diet out there. You change your eating habits and that of course will make you lose weight.
I am sure you have seen the commercials for the “Special K” cereal. It says something like “just replace 2 of your meals with our cereal and you’ll lose weight”. Now of course this will work. Again you are changing your eating habits.
Let’s look at why this doesn’t work in the long run.
1. Any person would get sick and tired of eating the same foods over and over. Even if it is chocolate! I love chocolate but I honestly felt sick thinking of eating it for every meal daily. You were given taste buds for a reason and you need to use them by letting yourself enjoy a wide range of foods. Now if children are different story! As a child I lived on baloney sandwiches and hot dogs!
2. Your body just can’t handle much of one thing no matter how good it is for you. People have accidentally over dosed by taking to much vitamins. I saw a story on TV about a teen that ate too much fish and almost died due to mercury poisoning.
3. Once you do lose the weight from the fad diet you go back to your normal eating habits and sadly you gain the weight back. You have missed the foods you denied yourself and you are in danger of over eating.
Fad diets come and go. They always will. People these days want things fast! That is the way this world works. But when it comes to weight loss the best way is slow. Stay away from fad diets.
Ashley Allgood is an upbeat author on many issues of diet and health. To find out more about the dangers of signing up for famous diet programs checkout Diet Program Woes.
