WHY EVERY FAD DIET WILL MAKE YOU LOSE WEIGHT,
AND WHY EVERY FAD DIET WILL MAKE YOUR GET FAT
AND WHY EVERY FAD DIET WILL MAKE YOUR GET FAT
As Americans, we LOVE fads.
We are infatuated, to an addictive degree, to what is popular. Coolness is an obsession that most of us
value over our core values, and it's at the root of much of our demise. It's no different when it comes to health and
fitness, nutrition, and especially diets.
Just think about all the crazes we've been through from Tae Bo to P90X
to Cross Fit. This especially holds true
for fad diets. There's the Atkins diet
(which I can honestly say led to my passion for fitness), the Zone Diet, the
South Beach Diet, the Paleo Diet, vegan diets, ketogenic diets, and IIFYM (If
It Fits Your Macros). There are even
things called the Raw Food Diet, the Peanut Butter Diet, and the 21 Day
Cleanse.
*SIDE
RANT: If you see anything that has the
word "cleanse" attached to it, run like Carl Lewis in the 1984 Olympics away from
it. This is the biggest scam going right
now. Using things like psyllium husk, essential
fatty acids, and herbal diuretics, along with a liquid diet is not a cleanse.
These products and companies
are selling your snake oil. Limiting
yourself to liquid calories and
eliminating food groups for
3 weeks, while including high amounts of fiber, laxatives, and diuretics will surely lead
to much weight loss. During these
"cleanses" your body is supposed to detoxify from all the
"chemicals" stored in the body.
The reality is, we have a very amazing organ called the liver that
is an amazing detoxifier. Unless you
have liver damage or malfunction cleanses or detoxification
systems do nothing to "cleanse" your body. Sure you'll pee a lot, andyou'll poop a lot, but
that's what happens when you actively increase fluid intake and take more fiber than you're used to
and take diuretics and laxatives.
It's not surprising that these "fad diets" are so
popular in our overly sexualized, image is everything society. We are impatient and we want everything
now. Most of us have not had to work
very hard for the things we have. We
think we have worked hard, but in comparison to our parents, grandparents, and
great grandparents, we have lived a plush life and when we want something we
want it now. We expect to lose 5, 10, 15
pounds per week. We watch people on THE
BIGGEST LOSER, and we want similar results.
We see fitness models, and we want to look like them. We see movie stars gain 20 pounds of pure
muscle for a movie role (don't kid yourself, professional athletes aren't the
only people using performance enhancing drugs and steroids, and there is no
regulation in Hollywood, those folks aren't just using recreational drugs, they
are using physique altering to land parts that pay 10's of millions of
dollars). Bottom line, we fall prey to
these fad diets time and time again, and we turn these snake oil selling
marketing geniuses into million and billionaires because we are so gullible.
I can tell you one thing for certain. If you start a fad diet, any fad diet, and
you stick to it, I promise you will lose weight. You have my guarantee. If you do not cheat, you do not slip up, you
follow it verbatim, you will lose weight.
If you want to hire me to implement one of these fad diets for you I
will do that, and I promise you will gain weight. I also promise, though, that you will slip
up. You will not be able to eat zero
carbs for the rest of your life. And I
promise, when you slip up, you will gain weight. And that's not always bad, because sometimes,
a cheat meal, re-feed day, or even cheat day can help to jump start your diet
and help you to lose even more weight.
However, what usually happens, is people slip up. They gain a couple of pounds and freak
out. They may resume their diet for a
little bit, but as we know from 2/3 of our country being overweight and 1/3 of
our country being obese, almost all will succumb to temptation, fall off
completely, regain the weight they lost, and most, sadly, will gain even more
weight and be heavier than they were when they started their "fad
diet". This happens because most of
the time when people are losing weight, they are losing an equal amount of
water, fat, and muscle. When they regain
the weight they lost, they mostly regain fat.
So if you lose 30 pounds of water, fat, and muscle and 10 pounds of it
is muscle, when you regain the 30 pounds you lost, you now actually have 10-20
EXTRA pounds of fat, and 10 pounds less muscle.
Nothing could be worse for your metabolism or hormones.
I can promise, though, these fad diets will work. They all work. They will all make you lose weight. See, the secret is, all diets, no matter
their name or premise work by the same thing.
Calorie restriction. Atkins diet
says no carbs. What happens is people
stop eating carbs. They lose all kinds
of water weight. After 2 weeks, there is
very little insulin present if folks stick with the plan, that means hunger is
under control and people don't overeat.
They eliminate carbohydrates from their diet, and the end up in a
caloric deficit. Raw foods diet says you
can't eat anything that is cooked and must eat vegan (no animal products). If you need 25000 calories per day to
maintain your weight and you eat only fruits and vegetables it's damn near
impossible to overeat. Paleo diet says
eat no processed foods, only foods that were available when cavemen roamed the
earth. Again, restriction. It's hard to find foods like this. All these diets also have other
restrictions. They may say, eat only 50
grams of carbohydrates and keep fats below 1/3 of your body weight, but eat as
much lean protein as you like. Or it may
say, a 150 pound female can eat up to 40 grams of fat, 180 carbohydrates, and
100 grams of protein (under 1500 calories per day, which should result in
weight loss). All of these diets are
doing the same thing. Restricting
calories.
I've also seen "coaches"/nutritionists say,
"you can eat as many green vegetables as you want and they don't count as
calories". WHAT? Do they know how many green beans and how
much broccoli I can eat? I'm quite
certain I can eat 1,000 calories per day of those combined if you let me.
One of the newer fads is If It Fits Your Macros. If you're not privy, there are 2 camps in the
fitness world, one is of the mind set of IIFYM.
For example, if you are supposed to eat 200 grams of protein, 300 grams
of carbohydrate, and 70 grams of fat, it doesn't matter where those come
from. Want cake? Eat cake.
Want ice cream eat ice cream. As
long as you hit those numbers every single day. The other camp is those referred to as
"clean eaters". These people
simple believe that if you wash your food first you can eat whatever the hell
you want and lose fat exponentially. (If
you believe that please never come to the internet again, or better yet, I have
some ocean front property in Arizona I'd like you to buy from me, great deals). In all seriousness, clean eaters eat only
"clean" food. What is a clean
food? Your guess is as good as mine,
honestly. The "clean eaters",
though, are those people you see living out of tupperware and coolers and
eating chicken, broccoli, rice, etc...
Quite frankly, I'm a hybrid of the two. I believe strongly in choosing healthy,
nutrient dense foods that are highly satisfying. Foods that taste good, provide numerous
nutrients, contain lots of water and fiber, and are not processed. I love sweet potatoes. I love whole grains. I love lean meats. I love fruits and vegetables. They should be the basis of any good
nutritional program, however, I also don't believe in restriction. When we restrict ourselves (such as when we
do a fad diet), we limit food choices.
If we love pizza and we don't have pizza for 2 months, we're probably
going to snap and eat a whole pie. If
that's all we do and we diet strictly for the next 2 months, great. Most people can't do that. But if use a combination of "clean
eating" and "IIFYM" and we know we are having pizza Friday
night, we can adjust for that in our daily macros. A popular delivery chain of pizza contains
250 calories/large pizza slice. The
other night, I had 3 pieces. My calorie
allotment for the day was around 2600 calories.
I ate 3 pieces of that pizza (750
calories) and drank a beer that had 250 calories. The rest of the day I made sure only to eat
1600 calories and I fell within my caloric range. It's the beauty of IIFYM. The next day, I had eggs, egg whites, brown
rice, broccoli, chicken breast, ground turkey, grapes, cherries, green beans,
and peanut butter. It's wonderful. I can eat "clean foods", but if I
want a cheese burger, I figure out the calories, fat grams, carbohydrates, and
protein grams and I make sure I can fit it into my daily macros and
calories. I don't live off pop tarts and
french fries. I also don't deprive
myself. If I want to lose weight, I
simply adjust my caloric intake and continue to track what I eat. If I want to lose more weight, I adjust
again. The lower my calories get, the
more whole foods I choose, simply because whole foods that are nutrient dense
and have higher amounts of water and fiber will satiate you more and keep
feeling full longer. If I'm doing trying
to lose weight, I simply increase my calories slightly (100/day for a week or
so before I add calories gain depending on weight gain).
People love fad diets because they don't think they have to
count calories, however, essentially you are counting calories. It's going to be much more beneficial to long
term success to simply take the time each day to weigh out your food on a food
scale or use the bar code scanner on your cell phone and log all your food into
an app like My Fitness Pal or Fat Secret.
Not only that, but following a combination of "clean eating"
and IIFYM is something that will provide you with healthy, nutritious food, and
give you a template for long term success you can follow for the rest of your
life.
Kyle Harris is an NASM Certified Personal Trainer, Contest Prep Coach, and Diet Coach. He also works as a Strength and Conditioning Coach with middle school and high school athletes. He can be reached via email at battersbox@yahoo.com or you can follow him on twitter @hossjob
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