Fad Diets to Avoid

Most weight loss diets are actually fad diets that are repackaged to us as the newest and latest way to lose weight. A good example of this kind of resell to the public is the Zone diet. The Zone Diet sounded novel when it first came out but it is actually based on food combining principles from Asia that have been around for thousands of years. Another example is the South Beach diet which is based on the Stillman Diet from the sixties.

So how do you tell if a fad diet is a truly just a repackaged trend? First of all if it is based on the way cavemen eat or on the foods eaten in the Bible it is likely to be a bit bogus. That type of diet is based on food deprivation and vegetarianism and both types of weight loss methods have been around for thousands of years. Basically if the diet is based on eating mostly protein and no carbs, carbs and no protein or no fat it is not a healthy diet.

It is also a fad diet if it is based on eating only one food such as a grapefruit only diet or fatty foods only diet. You just dont get all of the nutrition that you need eating this way. You need to eat a variety of foods in order to stay healthy.

The South Beach Diet, the Zone Diet and the Atkins diet are high protein low fat diet diets. These types of diets induce ketosis to accelerate weight loss. Ketosis is an abnormal body process that occurs during starvation. Ketosis causes fatigue, constipation, nausea, and vomiting, none of which are part of a healthy lifestyle. The long-term side effects of ketosis are documented to include heart disease, bone loss, and kidney damage.

Crash diets dehydrate you, low calorie diets put your body into starvation so you can't lose one more pound and high protein diets stress your kidneys and clog your arteries.

You do need both protein and fat in the diet as both serve important metabolic and physiological roles in the body. Fad and crash diets, such as the ones described above are not only unhealthy but they are also cause rebound weight gain. Also most diets cause an initial weight loss but the ultimate result is that you gain all of the weight back the minute you go off the plan. If you don't gain it back within a couple of months, you are likely to gain it all back plus a bit more within a year.