Forty-six percent of women and 22 percent of men in North America are trying to lose weight.
Many of these people are helping themselves by using the latest "fad diet". These diets are nutritionally inadequate and include foods that people wouldn't normally choose to eat.
Nutrition experts say "eat less and move more!" The goal for changing one's body is slow and steady weight control over a person's lifetime, rather than immediate weight loss. The recipe for success starts with a plan.
"Dieting" is a severe social concern in this country, especially for women. Unrealistic expectations and a lack of acceptance for variety in body type have forced many people to choose dangerous eating patterns.
Fad diets supply immediate gratification. Every one of these diets are successful in the beginning. People monitor their food intake and make healthier food choices. These successful tools fall by the way side once individual results are seen.
These unreliable fad diets all share similar characteristics:
- The diet promises quick weight loss, which usually results from water loss and lean muscle mass depletion.
- It promises that unlimited quantities of food can be eaten.
- It offers "spot reduction" such as "lose weight in the hips and thighs!"
- It uses strange descriptions of how the body digests, stores or burns fat. People who are not familiar with the scientific processes are those who end up being swayed.
- It limits food selection and encourages daily rituals. For example, eating a grapefruit with every meal, drinking only lemon water and honey or only sipping soup all day.
- It offers testimonials from celebrities promising a quick fix! Example, Acai berry diet pills, or the Hollywood "Diet in a Bottle".
- It is marketed as a "cure-all" with complete disregard for individual's body characteristics and individual health concerns.
- No advice is given to change lifestyle patterns.
- The diet seems to have a specific beginning and end. Once the individual reaches the desired weight goal, they sadly revert back to their former eating habits and usually end up regaining the weight they lost, plus more within the first 18 months.
- They claim that there is NO NEED TO EXERCISE!
These popular diets are designed to fail. They are monotonous, unpalatable, socially unacceptable, and some may lead to harmful or uncomfortable side effects. There is also no emphasis on creating any lifestyle changes.