All You Need To Know About Fad Diets

A fad diet is a weight loss plan or program that promises rapid results without solid scientific backing. These diets offer solutions that are not sustainable long term and more often than not involve cutting out entire food groups or drastically reducing calorie intake.

Most fad diets pose a health or nutrition risk. When food groups are demonised, and internal cues around hunger and fullness ignored, conditions like anorexia and cycles of weight loss followed by weight regain set in.

Unfortunately, there is no magical solution to weight loss and fad diets remove the focus from working on developing the skills to manage diet and weight in a healthy manner and instead lead to frustration and feelings of failure. So how do we identify fad diets and avoid falling into this trap?

Here is a quick checklist.

• They promise a magic cure to lose weight without having to change your lifestyle in any way. These include diet pills, lotions and wearables such as sweat suits 
• They recommend magical fat-burning effects of foods or hidden ingredients such as caffeine, or green tea extract.
• They promote the avoidance or severe limitation of a whole food group such as dairy products or all carbohydrates. Examples include very low carb (<50g carbohydrate per day unless medically prescribed), carnivore diets or paleo diets
• They suggest substituting everyday foods or food groups for expensive doses of supplements or other weight loss products.
• They promote eating mainly one type of food (mono diet) e.g. cabbage soup diet, boiled eggs diet, juice cleanses or avoiding all cooked foods (raw food diet)
• They recommend eating foods only in particular combinations based on your genetic type or blood group (blood group diet)
• They offer no or insufficient supporting scientific evidence apart from personal success stories.
• They focus only on your physical appearance rather than on health benefits.
• They recommend the same diet for everyone without accounting for specific needs per individual.
• They are based on a ‘secret’ that doctors are yet to discover or ‘don’t want you to know’
• They lack professional support. Fad diets are promoted by celebrities or influencers rather than health care professionals.

TAKE AWAY

If it feels like it’s too good to be true, then it probably is. Remember that working on correcting your eating habits, eating a balanced diet with a variety of nutrient dense foods and regular physical activity is the best approach for achieving and maintaining a healthy weight over time. Here is a link to our psychotherapy program that explores more on correction of eating habits and building a new healthier lifestyle to help in your weight management journey.