The Reasons Why You Should Avoid Fad Diets- By: Josh R. Rhodes

Description : Fad diets are appealing due to their twisted promises guaranteeing a miraculous amount of weight loss in a short amount of time, sometimes doing something extremely drastic or simply by doing nothing at all. Fad diets feed on the North American ideal of wanting something and wanting it immediately. This typical mindset is why fad diets are so popular but are ultimately destined to fail. There are literally hundreds of fat diets in mainstream society, such as the Master Cleanse, the Grapefruit diet, and the Cabbage Soup diet.

To sure to avoid anything that claims to be able to help lose extremely large amounts of weight in a short period of time. If you hear or read a product or weight loss plan promising to lose 20 pounds in one week, proceed with caution. Chances are you are dealing with a fad diet that is bound to have repercussions, whether physical or mental. Any restrictive diet that promotes more than 5 pounds per week is probably not nutritionally sound or can be followed for longer than a few weeks. Most fad diets may bring about results initially, but this stage is very short lived. The initial weight is almost always water weight and will come back when you resume normal eating habits again.

Fad diets usually are very low calorie meal plans, sometimes going lower than 1,200 calories per day for women and 1,400 for men. Needless to say, this extremely low calorie threshold will only put your body on the defensive by encouraging the survival instinct. This simply means that the body adjusts its metabolic rate to burn a similar number of calories to the amount that you ingest. Consequently, you can actually slow down your metabolism by pursing a low calorie diet and hinder weight loss.

Another telltale sign of a fad diet is the elimination or severe restriction of one or more food groups. This is not a nutritionally sound thing to do as you will be only be causing your body distress by refusing to provide certain vitamins and minerals that sometimes can only be provided by certain foods. This does not include trans-fatty acids though as this type of fat is extremely unhealthy and should be eliminated from your diet immediately.

Fad diets do not attempt to teach you how to go about gaining proper eating habits and are all destined to fail at some point. My suggestion would be to completely avoid them and learn healthy eating habits from the start.

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Author Resource : Josh has been writing for many years on topics that interest him. An example of one of his websites is http://osterblenderparts.org which provides information on Oster blender accessories.