How To Avoid A Fad Weight Loss Diet

By Bonnie Belle


The only thing worse than obesity is following a fad weight loss diet to eliminate it.

Obesity is a condition of excessive fat. If you are obese, chances are high that you have tried more than one diet plan to lose weight.

Although more than a hundred million Americans diet each year, 95% of them get all their weight back within five years. What makes things even worse for a third of them is that they gain more weight back. This failure to lose weight results in switching from one diet plan to another in vain.

The conventional approach to weight problems, focusing on fad weight loss diets or weight loss drugs, may leave you with just as much weight and the additional burden of ill health. For example, some fad diets try to eliminate carbohydrates and emphasize protein. While protein is an excellent food group, it has to be seen in perspective.

The Role Of Protein In Weight Loss

Today, as many as 65% of Americans are either overweight or suffer from obesity. Although this makes them look unattractive, far more serious issues are involved here.

Obesity is known to be a precursor to many debilitating health conditions such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, osteoarthritis, and gallbladder disease. Obesity contributes to as many as 375,000 deaths every year.

Obesity is responsible for public health care costs skyrocketing. Harvard researchers have estimated that obesity is the precursor in 19% of heart attacks, whose annual cost is about $30 billion. Meanwhile, obesity has a significant impact on diabetes, with 57% of diabetes traced back to obesity. The cost of diabetes is about $9 billion a year.

Set Realistic Goals

No doubt you have fallen for one or more of the weight loss diet schemes over the years, promising quick and painless weight loss.

Many quick weight loss diets simply fail to deliver on their promise. Instead of losing weight, you may even have gained more weight back after the diet. Instead of improving your health, it may have got worse.

Fad or quick weight loss diets suffer from overemphasizing the consumption of one type of food group. This goes against the fundamental ideas of eating well, which is to have a balanced diet consisting of numerous food groups.

Popular diet schemes fail to provide safe, healthy, and permanent weight loss.

Some of the weight loss diet schemes reign supreme briefly, only to fade out. While some wane from popularity due to being unproductive or unsafe, some simply lose the public's curiosity.

These fad diets advocate a specific technique (such as eliminating a certain food, or eating only certain combinations of foods) in conjunction with the basic idea that the body makes up the difference in energy by breaking down and utilizing some part of itself, essentially converting matter into energy.

Instead of choosing a fad diet that does not work, find a weight loss diet that is both healthy and that can help you lose weight.




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