What to Look Out for in a Fad Diet

Fad diets are diets designed to be followed for only a short period of time.  The term has also come to mean any diet that explodes into national or international fame, only to plummet into obscurity. Some of these fad diets include the cabbage soup diet, the Atkins diet, and the cookie diet. Some of the newly released diets include the Every Other Day Diet and the Cheat Your Way Thin Diet. They have been proven to work quite effectively for fat loss and they both talk about lifestyle diet rather than simple fad. Are they telling the truth or are they FAD as well?

Fad diets are sometimes known as food fad-ism. Any time one particular food suddenly becomes a superstar, that’s a food fad. These generally have some common elements, including:

-    Some elements of the food are said to have miraculous properties.
-    Many other foods are completely eliminated from the diet, because they are thought to have negative properties.

The Atkins diet displays the characteristics of one of these fad diets. In this diet carbohydrates are the Keystone element that is negative and therefore to be avoided. Carbohydrates take on both of the common elements in that removing carbohydrates from the diet creates a near magical metabolic state in which fat is burned at an incredible rate.  This diet had a number of short periods of extreme carbohydrate avoidance, followed by long periods of sustainable low carbohydrate eating. However, many people are able to continue the Atkins diet for years.

As with many have diets, Atkins popularity was extreme and short-lived. For a number of years anyone who thought of dieting thought about the Atkins diet .  Every movie star, singer, and sports figure claimed to use the Atkins diet when they needed to lose weight. When Dr. Atkins died to superstardom of his diet died with him.

There are many risks associated with fad diets.  Even a seemingly healthy diet like the Subway diet could be dangerous. At its center was a young man named Jared who had lost hundreds of pounds in only a year by eating Subway sandwiches. Jared’s diet was severe — going down to 900 calories a day from over 10,000.  Doctors agree that weight loss on that scale isn’t healthy. The diet did include many positive aspects such as exercise, like walking. Let’s talk about workouts. The newly released Warp Speed Fat Loss program claims to melt MORE than 2lbs of fat per week. Would one call it a Fad WORKOUT?

Be careful when taking on some of these fad diets. A healthy combination of reasonable diet and exercise in the long-term can help you lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle.