Fad Diets“QIUCK & EASY”

What is a FAD diet?

A fad diet is a weight loss plan that promises quick and easy weight loss. The problem with these diets is that they are short term diets, and are not very healthy. These diets will make you gain the weight back as fast as you dropped it (if not quicker) when you stop the diet. They also take a large toll on your body and will damage your health, mood, energy levels etc. If these diets are so bad then why do people still try them and use them? We love shortcuts and not having to work as hard as we should. That’s exactly what these diets promise: quick and easy. We also want to look good, feel good, and are afraid of future weight related diseases. Companies and businesses use this weakness to their advantage and advertise their diet and make it promise those things. In reality they are hurting us more for their own profit. If this sounds familiar, it should. Drug dealers do a very similar thing with lying about the drug, the outcomes it will give, and the quick fix the drug gives us with a lot more health issues down the road. The best option in weight loss is not to take shortcuts and to make a long term change in your life. Changing your lifestyle to a healthier lifestyle by exercising and eating properly will take some time, but it is the right way to do it.

My Experience

The funny thing is that I knew all these facts about how bad diets are, but just like a lot of other people I turned to one. The FAD diet that I will explore more deeply works very well and does exactly what its meant to do. It will make you lose a lot of weight very fast in a short period of time. The only set back is that it does horrors to the body and it is torture. So why did I do this? Even though I knew this was going to happen; I was desperate for a fast weight loss method. With some research and my previous knowledge on health, fitness, and cooking I found a very effective diet. I even tweaked the diet to an extreme on my own to make it work better. The reason I turned to this diet was because I had 6 days to my provincial fight and I was about 6 kilos over weight. I measured myself on the Monday before my competition and I found out I was 64 kilos when I had to be 59. If I didn't get into this weight category I wouldn't be able to fight, so the options were give up or lose 6 kilos in 6 days. I took on the challenge and I succeeded! By the Saturday when it was my weigh in day I had lost the 13 pounds I needed to loose. This diet is very popular amongst sport coaches especially wrestling coaches and I call it the fruit and veggie diet.

Fruit and Veggie diet

This diet could also be called fruit and veggie + water diet, because those are pretty much the only things you can consume. To be honest the fastest way to lose weight is by not eating anything, unfortunately I couldn't do that for a week while going school and exercising. The other option is to drop as many food categories as possible. Ironically I actually used the Canadian food guide to make/tweak this diet.

Carbs (complex)

The first and biggest no would be all the complex carbohydrates and starches. Anything with starch would be out, so no rice, bread, pasta, cereal, etc. The reason for this is because complex carbohydrates are hard for our body to break down so they are broken down much more slowly or are stored as fat, and energy reserves.

Fats & Meat

The next category to say no to are fats, and salts. No oil or food with too much fat can enter the body, because obviously the fat and oil would remain as fat and be stored. Unfortunately this means one can’t have a lot of meat in their diet therefor one has to turn to protein drinks. Protein drinks are a great source of protein and they have no known side effects, but unfortunately they are meant as supplements. Supplements are supposed to come with the other sources of protein like meat or nuts, but they can’t be consumed either because nuts and meat have a lot of fat. Although ideally I wasn’t meant to have any meat I did end up having a few chicken breasts plain with no salt or oil. Even then I had to over cook the chicken breast, so the fats and juices would evaporate before I ate it. That was very dry and unpleasant experience.

Salt

Salt is one of the most important to say no to, because it can make you gain the most weight. The salt by itself weighs almost nothing, but what is does inside the body is that it makes us maintain our moisture and water. As you may know up to 60 percent of our body is water so it can weigh a lot, although not all of it can be lost because a large portion makes up the cells in our body. The rest of that water that can be lost should be lost and for that we need no salt in the body to increase our weight.

Dairy

Although milk is always considered very healthy because of its high calcium and protein content, its not the best option for a diet. Milk and other dairy products simply contain too much fat. I suppose I could have drank skimmed milk and 0% fat yogurt. Unfortunately it never accrued to me. For others skimmed milk is ok, because all the fat is processed out. Milk is also a great solvent for protein powder and it tastes much better then water and protein powder.

Fruits

With this strict diet it seems as if you can’t have anything. The only things you are allowed to have are fruits, veggies, herbs, and water. We are actually lucky to be able to eat fruits. Fruits have a lot of sugar there for I thought I couldn’t eat them at first, but with some research I found out I could. The sugars in fruits are simple sugars or simple carbs. This means our body can break them down and use them for energy almost immediately. Therefor you shouldn't be afraid to have some for quick energy and to fill you up. Fruits also have a lot of antioxidants, minerals, and vitamins. Although fruit juice is not an option. A lot of fruit juice is filled with unnatural sugars which are harder to break down, and have less minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants than actual fruit. Even if the brand is very dependable, and sais it is 100% real fruit juice, the fruit juice has little to no fibre so the actual fruit is the better option to fill you up.

Vegetables

Vegetables have very little oil, fat, sugar, salt, etc. Like fruits they have many antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals so they are very good for us. Vegetables a packed with fibre so they fill you up easily and keep you full for some time. There are thousands of salads that could be made so you wont be short on variety. Vegetables should ideally be consumed raw but for variety they can be cooked. It should be noted when they are cooked, they lose a lot of their nutrients and water.

Water

Water should be drunk a lot through this diet. The body is missing some very important ingredients, water shouldn’t be one of them. If there is vey little salt in the body the water will come out easily. More water in our body can also make us lose a lot of stored water. Up to 4 pounds of water can be stored inside the body for emergency. If we drink a lot of water the body will realize it is available and won’t store it any longer. Water is also the only liquid that can be used to cook, so either steaming, or boiling. Although I do not recommend boiling your vegetables they turn very gross. All the sulfur in the vegetables is released, they smell and taste disgusting. I had some of the worst food I’ve ever tasted while doing this diet. Because of the lack of seasoning, oil, and boiling the veggies, the food tasted horrible.

How Is This Diet?

This diet as mentioned before does its job perfectly, it is extremely quick for weight loss. On the other hand the negative effects it has on your health are immense. Cutting off so many food groups means that all the benefits they bring you disappear. Complex carbs are supposed to break down slowly and give you energy when you need it, but with this diet you have none of that extra energy. You are always tired. Some fats are actually good for the body and clean your digestive system, they also act in the same fashion as carbs where they give you energy; losing healthy oils isn’t good. Dairy is great for stronger bones, muscles, teeth etc. Because of the calcium and protein, you shouldn’t miss it. Meats are a great source of protein for the body and give us other nutrients and minerals like iron or omega-3. This diet is very bad for your health and it starves you.

Affects of the diet

Because the diet makes us miss out on so many great things, our body doesn’t like it. Missing all those foods from your system leaves you felling weak, tired, angry, and you can not focus. Your performance level lowers in every field (socially, academically, physically.) This diet always makes you crave food, and it takes a lot of will power to stop yourself. It can actually lead to long term problems if it is practiced for a long time. For example because we experience malnutrition, our body can’t grow, so if this diet continues for too long it can affect our growth. Diets can also have negative psychological affects and can lead us to think we are not skinny enough which can turn us anorexic or bulimic. This diet should not be practiced ideally. If it is, the person shouldn’t diet and starve their body for more than a week.

After The Diet

After about 5 days the body starts to crave high calorie foods. When You do finish your diet you will immediately want to eat something salty, greasy, with sauce and bread. Most likely you will consume a lot of calories and amazingly all the weight you lost will come back as fast as you lost it. All you were doing this whole time was flushing out the extra weight and fat in your body, but by consuming it again they go back to their original place. I lost 13 pounds in 6 days, then gained 13 pounds in 3 days. You can even gain more weight after the diet is over because your body will be starved and it will want to gain all the calories back. The worse part is that your body will be weaker at the end of the diet not healthier and stronger. Because first, you depleted all of its supplies, then you flushed in a bunch of junk. Even though my fight was the day after my weigh in, my performance was very poor relatively because my body was still weak and slow.

The Science and reasoning

Why can we hold back for the week that are body is being starved and why not longer? A lot of science about how are bodies work date back to the earlier days of man. We where originally all hunters and gatherers. This lasted for most of our time except the past few millennia where civilization assigned jobs to people and food became less scarce. As hunters and gatherers our bodies had to go with out food for 5-7 days at a time before we got some food. Evolution allowed us to do this, so I knew I could hold back on food for that short period. This short period is the only time you are supposed to hold back. The starvation period should not last any longer then a week.

Why do we gain the weight back after the diet? This goes back to the early days of evolution again. Once the hunters had killed a pray they would over eat. Storing the food and transporting it wasn’t the easiest job, so our bodies did that for us. Our bodies evolved to be able to hold on to the extra fat, complex carbs, sugars, water, etc. This would mean on the next trip where we starve for a few days our bodies have a reserve. Therefor after the diet ends our body wants to fill up its reserves again so it holds on to what ever we eat.

A healthy eating habit

A healthy eating habit is different then a diet. Diets are fast and temporary, but eating habits aren’t. There can be many rules and info about a healthy eating habit, but personally I don’t like wasting my time on all the little facts. My only rule which works for me and I recommend to you is make your own food fresh. That means no fast food, or processed and packaged food. The reason frozen food and fast food taste good and are addictive is because they are filled with components we crave. All of the food is carbohydrates, sugar, and fat. The same ingredients our bodies crave the most. This also has to do with evolution and the shortage of those fats, sugars, and carbs in the past. Our bodies really want them and will store them. Making your own food is healthy and fun. When cooking your own food it tastes so much better then the outside food, and you know what is going into your body. All the ingredients are under your control, so you can be the judge of the health benefits.

Recommendation

Your best option is NOT TO DIET. Dieting and a healthy life style are 2 very different things. This diet is a temporary torture for a temporary weight loss goal. Unless you are an athlete who needs to lose the weight quickly you should not go on this diet. It will consume you! For athletes and other people who want to loose weight you really have to eat and train properly. It will take time, but it is the right way. Your body doesn’t deserve to be tortured like this when the end result will be worse then the starting point. This diet is not recommended to any one especially teens because of the growth stunt it may cause. Take the right path even if it is not the quickest or easiest.