In my last post, I gave you an idea as to how weight loss occurs. Simply put, if you eat less than what your body requires and move more, you tend to lose weight. In this post, I want to talk a bit about “fad diets”, and how successful they are in weight management.
“Fad Diets”: Are they helpful in weight management?
If you think about the amount of people that follow a “fad diet”, how many of them lose weight? The answer is surprising: a lot of them lose weight. So, then the following questions pop up:
· Why do I lose weight on a “fad diet”? Doesn’t that mean they’re successful if I lose weight on it?
· Why don’t people keep the weight off when they finish a “fad diet”, and eventually gain more weight back?
· Do I really need a “fad diet”?
Why do I lose weight on a “fad diet”? Doesn’t that mean it’s successful?
The one thing that all “fad diets” have in common is this: they make you eat less food than you normally would. They generally choose foods that are low calorie, and tell you to eat them in small portions that sometimes don’t even constitute a serving size. Some even provide an exercise routines to assist you.
Examples of “Fad Diets”
For example, Ketogenic/Atkins diets require you to eat a very low carbohydrate diet, typically less than 20 grams of carbohydrates a day, to create a calorie deficit. Your diet then tends to be mostly fats and some proteins. The reason why this diet can succeed is that it makes you satiated due to protein and fat being satiating macronutrients. You then tend to eat less because you become extremely satiated. That’s not to say that the diet is necessarily bad. If you are someone who can reliably cut out carbohydrates, and if you want to lose weight you may find more success on this diet. However, you need to manage your food intake to track carbohydrates as eating more carbohydrates than you should will take you out of ketosis. This will result in the body not using much fat as an energy source, which is the reason to go on a low carbohydrate diet for weight loss in the first place.
Another “fad diet” is the hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) diet. This diet requires you to inject the hCG hormone into your body, as it claims the hormone helps with weight loss. The meal plan provided also puts you on a severe calorie deficit for the first few days, typically around 500 to 800 calories a day. It then increases your the calorie intake slightly, to around 1000 to 1200 calories. This is a dangerous diet. You have no idea what you’re injecting into your body. It could be a placebo that you’re actually injecting, as the kit does not come with any certificates of analysis from a lab guaranteeing that you’re injecting the hormone into your body. Many studies have shown that injecting hCG into your body does nothing for weight loss.
So what can we take away?
As I mentioned previously, if you eat less and move more, you tend to lose weight. This is the basic strategy of a “fad diet”. Any additions to the diet to market a “fad diet” such as tablets, drinks and so on, do nothing for weight loss. Another thing to keep in mind, “fad diets” are not new. They have been around for centuries, promising people things that they won’t achieve just so those that want to sell them make money.
There is no quick and easy way to lose weight and keep it off
People need to understand this. Yes, you can crash diet and lose weight, it’s possible. But what’s the cost of this? Depriving your body of nutrients, being hungry all the time, and being unhappy about it. People need to realize the negative effects outweigh the positives, and that’s why going on a “fad diet” is not good long term health and weight loss.
Why don’t people keep the weight off when they finish a “fad diet” and eventually gain more weight back?
As mentioned before, “fad diets” put you on severe calorie deficits. When you are in a calorie deficit, you get hungrier. Satiety and hunger is managed by the hormones leptin and ghrelin. Leptin is a hormone made by your fat cells. Ghrelin is produced in your stomach. Leptin signals that you’re satiated, whereas ghrelin signals that you’re hungry. When you deprive your body of food, ghrelin increases which is why you feel hungrier and why you to want to eat. Some time after eating, your ghrelin reduces.
Leptin levels depend on how much of fat you have in your body. The higher the amount of fat you have, the higher your leptin levels. At some point, too much leptin makes you leptin resistant. What this means is that even if you eat food, your body can’t understand that it’s satiated, because you’re resistant to leptin.
This may cause you to binge eat. You then feel guilty about this and cut out even more calories the next day. Sometimes, you don’t even eat the next day, because you think it will help you lose weight because you ate excessively the previous day. It doesn’t. Because your leptin levels are still high, you don’t feel satiated and you may tend to binge the next day. This type of behaviour may lead to developing an eating disorder if this cycle continues.
So, is it only issues with hormones?
In addition to this, “fad diets” do not teach you how to make healthier food choices, as the sole purpose to go on a “fad diet” is to lose weight. Weight management is not its purpose.
It may also tell you that you can’t eat certain common foods. An example is that a “fad diet” will have something like you are only allowed to have almond/soya milk in your tea/coffee instead of full cream cow’s milk, or that you can’t eat apples. Some even say that you can’t eat tomatoes and potatoes. Why do you need to do this, what’s the purpose of excluding these foods?
The person who created the diet doesn’t explain, and probably can’t explain why. If you are on a diet that you purchased, and they do not explain why certain common foods are excluded, I would be vary wary of it. Sometimes, the diets restrict healthy foods that you love to eat. Because of this, it makes the diet even more difficult to adhere to. You then stop following the diet because you can’t adhere to it, and tend to eat your older diet, which may lead you to gaining weight if you consume more food than you need.
Do I really need a “fad diet”?
No one really needs a “fad diet”. What people need to develop are healthy habits that form part of a healthy lifestyle. Some examples are eating a mostly plant-based diet and exercising more. Why plant-based? Because we know vegetables and fruits are good for you. That does not mean that you need to be vegetarian, or even vegan. Cardio helps your cardiovascular system which reduces your risk of mortality. Resistance training is important as building muscle helps you out when you’re old. Arnold Schwarzenegger was 71 years old when he was drop kicked, and he didn’t get injured. If you know any person around you at that age that was drop kicked, do you think they would be okay after it?
Common sense is generally better than “fad diets”
People don’t want to be overloaded with information. Yet to not be misinformed about a topic, you need to know more. How often have tried weight loss tips, such as drinking water with lemon in it helps lose weight? Or even things such as consuming apple cider vinegar helping with weight loss, from Facebook posts only to find out that it doesn’t work out? Think about it. If you eat a lemon on its own, does it make you lose weight? What about lemon in water makes you lose weight? Could doing a bit of reading on it help? A quick Google search will show that common diet myths like the two examples above still persist, even after being debunked on countless occasions.
Isn’t that a lot of effort?
Now, I’m not to saying that you need to understand everything about the topic, but the point is to always be skeptical of what people tend to say.
For example, common sense tells us that fizzy drinks are bad as they have a lot of sugar. If we were to cut out Coke from our diet, we may actually lose weight. On the other hand, fruits also contain a lot of sugar. Are fruits just as bad as Coke? Should we remove fruits from our diet? No, not really. Common sense tells us that fruits are good for us. Fruits are more than just the sugar in them, as they are loaded with nutrients and have fibre in them. All that Coke has is sugar, and there’s no nutritional benefit to it. So, what’s the deal, who do you trust if a Facebook post says fruits are “The Devil”?
Well ask yourself if you’re more likely to overeat fruit, compared to drinking a large amount of Coke. You may tend to drink more calories of Coke compared to overeating of fruits. Why is that the case? Because fruits are more satiating than Coke. Solid foods in general are more satiating than liquids. This is why it’s easier to overconsume liquids compared to overconsuming solid foods.
What needs to change?
Now, if Coke is unhealthy because of its sugar content does this mean you’re a bad person if you drink it?
No, you’re not a bad person if you drink the Coke.
The thing is, you need to separate good and bad foods being associated with being a good or a bad person. But if you’re constantly drinking Coke, and you are gaining weight maybe you should consider reducing or eliminating your Coke intake. This is using common sense to make better decisions. This type of logic can be extended to biscuits, chips and so on.
At the end of the day, common sense can help us easily lose some weight without changing your diet drastically.
Very informative … I’m learning a few things that I never knew here …