For anybody who wishes to lose weight quickly, fad diets seem to be the vehicle of choice. They appear to have taken over the weight loss industry like fad diets are the ‘new normal’ way of losing weight.
Everyone appears to forget what ‘old normal’ used to look like. It’s a distant memory. But it’s time for me to explain why you shouldn’t follow fad diets and what to do instead.
What is a ‘fad’?
A fad is any form of collective behaviour that develops within a culture, a generation, or a social group. It’s something in which a group of people enthusiastically follow on impulse for a limited period.
Fads are also objects or styles that achieve short-lived popularity but fade away. Think yo-yos, pogs, and Tamagotchis in the primary school days. Regarding styles, I’m sure we’ve all had some fashion disasters. All you can do is look back at your old photos and laugh.
Fads result from an activity or behaviour perceived as emotionally popular or exciting. They catch on when the number of people adopting it increases to being noteworthy. Yet, just as quickly as they appear, fads fade when the perception of novelty is gone.
What is a ‘fad diet’?
If we look at the term “Fad” in a diet sense, we will soon see that you might have fallen into the “Fad trap” once, twice, or even many times before.
A fad diet is a way of eating (Or sometimes not even eating) that has been popular for a certain amount of time. Strangely, it isn’t a standard dietary recommendation that can often attract people to it because it’s a different approach.
Before we go any further, a standard dietary recommendation tends to be the fundamentals of a healthy and balanced diet. You can tweak this advice, but you must understand that if a diet is so different from this advice, it’s best to ignore it.
A standard definition of a fad diet lies in the popularity of a diet promoting short-term changes instead of lifelong changes. The popularity of a fad diet has no association with a diet’s effectiveness, is not grounded in sound science, and isn’t centred around the safety or well-being of people.
Fad diets often promise unreasonably quick weight loss. They’re promoted with exaggerated claims like “Drop 7 pounds in 7 days”, which is possible. However, what they’re not telling you is after Day 10, you will be exactly the same weight as when you started.
Types of fad diets
Fad diets are ever-changing. Once one gets shut down or loses popularity, another one pops up. Some clone into another title even though they’re the same thing. If I were to list every fad diet that’s ever existed, I would be here for a long time.
Instead, I’m going to outline each category so you understand the wide range of groups associated with fad diets.
Herbal or other supplements – Think weight loss pills, fat burners, and apple cider vinegar.
Food-specific diets – These encourage you to eat large amounts of a single food, such as the cabbage soup or the potato diet.
No carbohydrate diets – These encourage you to ditch carbs completely and live off protein and fat.
No fat diets – These encourage you to ditch fats completely and live off protein and carbohydrates.
Liquid diets – These are things like meal replacement shakes that tell you to ditch food and live off ‘Nutritionally balanced’ shakes instead.
Fasting – Telling people to only eat during specific periods of the day or even days of the week.
Things to look out for when searching for diets
I don’t wish to provide my full opinion on specific fad diets. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Your body is yours, and you can do what you want with it. Not all fad diets are inherently detrimental to your health. In fact, some fad diets are used in the healthcare world for specific reasons, and there’s actual reasoning behind them. Having said that, there are red flags of bad dietary advice that I wish to share with you. Keep a look out for the following….
Diets promising rapid weight loss such as more than 1kg/2lbs per week. Or other extraordinary claims that sound too good to be true. If they sound too good to be true, they generally are. It’s like those emails you get telling you’ve been picked by a king of a country you’ve never heard of and he wants to give you £1,000,000. He just needs your bank account details.
Diets that appear to be nutritionally imbalanced or highly restrictive. They forbid entire food groups or even only allow one food or food type to be consumed. The same goes for diets, which tell you to consume only 500 calories a day (Never go lower than 1200 calories per day; it’s damaging to your vital organs).
Diets recommending specific foods to be detoxing to the body or to burn fat. Your liver and kidneys are the king and queen of detoxing. We all have them, so detoxing isn’t a problem for the body. You burn fat by consuming less energy than your body needs, so you don’t need specific foods to burn fat.
Diets promising a one-size-fits-all “Magic pill” with little or no effort. Just take this pill, and the rest will take care of itself. That’s certainly not the way weight loss works. They tell you that you don’t need to make any dietary changes other than taking the “Magic pill” daily. They tend to be a laxative, which doesn’t sound enjoyable.
Diets that provide no health warning for those with pre-existing medical conditions.
Diets that solely focus on appearance enhancements rather than health benefits. If they aren’t talking about health benefits, they tend to be hiding some scary side effects.
Diets where you’ve got people on social media telling you to use their code. This goes for ‘Influencers’ and also people you may know. If they’re telling you how it worked for them, run a mile. It’s an affiliate scheme or multi-level marketing scheme. It’s a way for the person to preach the success of a diet or supplement that makes them money.
Diets requiring you to purchase a specific product or supplement. Once again, a specific product or supplement doesn’t achieve weight loss. It’s achieved by consuming less energy than your body needs.
And finally, diets based on a secret that nobody has discovered yet. I’m pretty sure that millions, if not billions of pounds is spent on evidence-based research by reputable scientific institutes. If they researched something that was worth knowing about, then it would be in the public domain.
Why are fad diets so popular?
As mentioned earlier, fad diets are so popular because of the short-term buzz around them. We all want to know about the latest way to lose weight, especially when our friends and family discuss it. We never wish to feel left out, so we jump on board. Before you know it, even the person in the local shop is talking to you about it.
It’s hard to avoid the influence of fad diets. It’s challenging to go against the grain and stick to the true way of weight loss when everyone’s telling you it will be quicker if you switch to the latest fad diet. Fad diets are popular because we all want a quick fix. In fact, we want a quick fix in all aspects of our lives. But it would help if you remembered that impatience is the biggest killer of progress. The things that matter, whether relationships, careers, weight loss, or our health, take time to achieve. Society has caused us all to be impatient.
We get everything instantly on our smartphones, from deliveries to news to dates to emails. This leads us all to want our weight loss results to come quickly, too. So many people do fad diets because they don’t want to wait; they want results now. Drop a dress size in one week with our fitness retreat, get a six-pack in six weeks, or lose weight drinking our smoothies that taste of soil. We are willing to throw our hard-earned money at fad diets and also sacrifice and punish our bodies both physically and mentally.
Is there ever a good time for a fad diet?
There are certain times when a medical professional may advise a fad diet. This is because the medical condition is more damaging to our health than the fad diet itself. Let’s say a patient needs critical surgery. The surgeon faces the problem that the patient needs to lose weight to reduce the risk of complications during surgery. The surgeon or consultant would then place the patient on a short-term medically prescribed fad diet to ensure the surgery can take place. The medical condition that needs surgery is more damaging to the patient’s long-term health than a short-term fad diet. So, placing the patient on a short-term fad diet is crucial to ensure quick weight loss before the surgery date.
There are many other medical reasons a consultant would prescribe a short-term fad diet. But I’m not a medical professional, so I’m only outlining potential reasons why somebody may be prescribed a fad diet for a short period of time. Overall, medically prescribed fad diets are the exception. They have been issued due to a specific condition for an individual patient.
My issues with fad diets
I do not wish to sound like a ‘fad diet hater’. The purpose of this article is to provide you with all of the information you may need in relation to fad diets. I wish for you to make up your own mind about them. But I have to ensure you understand fad diets in-depth as generally, people aren’t aware of the issues with fad diets.
Here are my issues with fad diets….
They take essential nutrients out of your diet
Fad diets place you on such a strict eating regime that they disregard the importance of essential nutrients for long-term health and body functionality. These essential nutrients are vitamins and minerals. In nutrition, they are called micronutrients, whereas proteins, carbohydrates, and fats are called macronutrients. This makes vitamins and minerals sound inferior to proteins, carbohydrates, and fats. However, the word micronutrient means you only need small amounts of each particular vitamin or mineral for your body to function correctly. Taking these essential nutrients from your diet won’t make you feel good. They are vital in allowing your body to do its thing and function properly. Your body won’t like this change, even if you do when you jump on the scales.
They kid you into believing you’ve lost weight
Yep, they’re right sneaky devils. Weight loss isn’t losing weight for literally one day. Weight loss is the weight that is lost and stays off. When you go on a fad diet, you will lose weight. But as soon as you stop the fad diet (Because it will become ineffective and/or unsustainable at some point), your weight will go shooting straight back up to where you started. This isn’t true weight loss.
True weight loss is fat loss. When you follow a fad diet, it’s likely that much of the weight you lose is water and lean muscle rather than body fat. Weight loss should be fat loss. If it is lean muscle, then your body is basically eating itself and using the lean muscle as energy. If it is water that’s lost, then you will just put the weight back on when you introduce carbohydrates back into your diet.
Pick up a litre of water, and it feels quite heavy. Now imagine losing that weight. Well, you can do this just by taking carbohydrates out of your diet for a short period of time. Many fad diets include cutting carbohydrates from the diet. Your body will retain 2.7 grams of water for every gram of glycogen. Glycogen is a storage form of energy in the muscle or liver. Your body can store up to 500 grams of glycogen, which equates to 1.35kg of water being held. Take out carbohydrates for a week; by the end of it, you will be around 2-3kg lighter. Water retention will return to normal as soon as you introduce these carbohydrates into your diet. This means you will regain the weight you previously lost.
It’s not good for your body
If you lose water or muscle weight, it will never be good for your body. The focus of weight loss should always be on fat loss. It would be best if you were well-hydrated for several reasons. But that’s all for another article, some other time. Our muscles need lots of energy.
The more muscle you have, the easier it is to burn off body fat. Oh, and you can also consume more calories. But once again, that’s for another article. In relation to your health, I mentioned earlier that you should never drop your calories below 1200 per day. Unfortunately, most fad diets tell you to consume as little as 400-500 calories per day. As I said earlier, this is damaging to your vital organs.
It’s not a consistent way to lose weight
Consistency is key to achieving long-term weight loss. Unfortunately, fad diets focus on short-term results. They require you to live an unsustainable lifestyle. Which is only setting you up to fail. When you fail, you’re disheartened and begin believing you will never be able to lose weight for good. When you believe you can’t lose weight, you don’t try to lose weight. What’s potentially even worse is you give the same fad diet a go, lose weight, and then gain it all back – Again! It’s not you that’s failing. Fad diets are failing you.
What could you do instead of a fad diet?
So far, I’ve provided you with my points on fad diets. You may continue to try fad diet after fad diet. That’s fine. It’s your choice and your body. But what I need to do to finish this article is provide you with information on how I advise my clients to eat. First of all, we are all so different. We all have different needs and preferences, and a fad diet that works for one person won’t work for another. I need to provide you with essential information that will work for all, regardless of our personal preferences and needs.
Below, I’ve outlined the key points you should do instead…
Track your calorie intake
Weight loss is achieved by consuming less energy than your body needs. When you do this, your body will use body fat and convert it to the remaining energy it needs. Therefore, removing body fat from the body. To ensure you’re consuming less energy than your body needs, you must track your calories. This allows you to see how many calories are in certain foods. It also provides you with data. This data is so valuable. You can then see areas of your food intake that you can alter. If you track your calories and see that you’re in a calorie deficit, you will lose weight. It’s that simple.
Consume food from all food groups
I’m sure you’ve heard people talk about consuming a balanced diet. This is repeated because it is the best way to eat for your body. A balanced diet includes carbohydrates, proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals. By consuming all of these food groups, your body can function correctly. You will feel more energised, your moods will be better, and your health will improve in various ways. When your body can function properly, losing weight over the long term will be easier. The quality of foods from these food groups is also important, but for now, just focus on including foods from each food group.
Think long-term rather than short-term
It can be challenging to look beyond the present moment. When the decision has been made to lose weight, you’re so motivated that you’re willing to do whatever it takes. Once the initial motivation wears off, your drastic changes appear too much to handle and become unsustainable. You make some progress. But more is needed to achieve your ultimate weight loss target. This is why you need to think long-term. Which way of eating will you be able to stick to for a prolonged period? Think three months, six months, or even a year in duration. Which way of eating will you be able to stick to once you’ve achieved your ultimate weight loss target?
You see, your ultimate weight loss target isn’t the end goal. The end goal is to create a way of eating that will work for you for the rest of your life. One that will ensure the weight stays off this time. Don’t be sucked into short-term results. Think of the bigger picture and ensure you’ve created a way of eating that will sustain the results you’ve worked so hard to achieve.
My overall verdict on fad diets
This article is coming to an end. I congratulate you on making it this far, as it’s a rather lengthy article on fad diets. I want to finish off by giving my overall verdict on fad diets (You can probably tell this by the article title and the content, to be honest). Fad diets are an unsustainable and unhealthy way of losing weight. They’re a short-term solution to a long-term problem. A long-term problem needs to be addressed with a long-term solution. That’s the only way you’ll be able to lose weight and keep it off.
Now, don’t worry—a long-term solution doesn’t need to mean long-term sacrifice and unhappiness. In our online weight loss course, we always ask our clients: When you analyse a problem, do you seek a solution that befits its scale? When people aspire to lose weight, they feel as though this can only be achieved by making drastic changes to their current lifestyle. This is why fad diets appeal to so many of us. They are the big drastic change to the big problem. But the truth is, weight loss can be achieved by making small changes on a regular basis. These changes will come together and help you achieve this big goal of yours.
Here at The Weight Loss Academy, we help each client lose weight this way. We help each client create their roadmap to weight loss success. The Road To Weight Loss becomes clear. We wish to help many people achieve their desired body without disrupting their current lifestyle. Slow and steady wins the race. Not fad diets and drastic changes.
What is your verdict on fad diets?
Points to remember
You should never cut out a food group from your diet.
There is no quick fix for losing weight.
It would help if you were losing body fat, not muscle or water.
The best way for weight loss is by following a balanced diet.
You will lose weight but gain it back straight away if you follow a fad diet.