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5 Risks of Fad Diets and What to do Instead
Each year, over 160 million Americans commit to dieting, which is a boon for commercial weight-loss programs to the tune of over $70 billion. With so much emphasis on shedding those extra pounds, you’d think we’d be healthier and thinner. Not so much. Nearly 80% of those dieters regain their lost weight within a year.
So what’s happening? And more importantly, if fad diets don’t work, what does? In this blog, Caryn McAllister, PT, DPT, CEO, and her skilled team at High Quality Home Therapy share their insights on how to lose weight and keep it off.
What is a fad diet?
With so many dieting programs, let’s start this topic by defining what a fad diet is. Keep in mind that if you are desperately seeking to lose weight, it’s easy to be drawn in by the glitzy marketing around fad diets.
Give yourself some grace, but be mindful of diet programs that claim:
- To work fast and be easy to follow
- Restrict specific food groups
- Tout that certain foods or beverages can change body chemistry
- A special supplement or product connected to the plan will make you lose weight
Five ways that fad diets can be risky
The inconvenient truth is that the problem with fad diets isn’t just that they don’t work, or more specifically, don’t result in long-term weight loss. Fad diets can pose several risks.
1. Dehydration and nutrient deficiencies
Fad diets are hyper-focused on triggering quick weight loss and are lax in supplying your body with the nutrients it needs. This scenario creates a perfect storm for fatigue, nutrient deficiencies, and dehydration. And, the weight you did lose is considered muscle and water loss, not fat.
2. Designed to be short-term solutions
Fad diets do nothing to teach you how to eat healthy, lose weight sensibly, and add in exercise to keep the weight off. Not surprisingly, short-term successes aren’t sustainable and result in long-term disappointment.
3. Set you up for failure
Similarly, fad diets are unsustainable. The whole experience can leave you feeling defeated, as if the problem is you, not the diet that set you up to fail. Your confidence, already diminished, gets further deferred with the whole “why me” scenario.
4. Lead to never-ending yo-yo dieting
Unfortunately, once you get into that funk of somehow blaming yourself for the long-term ineffectiveness of a fad diet, you are much more likely to jump on the bandwagon again when the next popular fad diet hits the market.
5. Promote an unhealthy narrative about food
The main risk of fad diets is that they never help you develop a healthy relationship with food, which is the key to losing weight and living a healthy lifestyle. And that’s where nutrition counseling comes in.
Nutrition plans dialed in just for you
If you’ve tried a diet plan with a buddy, and your friend lost weight, and you didn’t, or worse yet, gained weight, you are familiar with how losing weight is not a cookie-cutter endeavor.
At High Quality Home Therapy, we offer nutrition counseling for patients of all ages. Our nutrition specialists understand that every person’s situation and body chemistry are a little different, and we also know that making lifestyle changes is not easy. We don’t judge, but meet you where you are and guide you to your weight and health goals.
Our nutrition services begin with gathering baseline information, such as your weight and body mass index (BMI), and checking your blood pressure and other vital signs. We ask about your current eating and exercise habits, medical and family history, and wellness goals. If needed, we screen for underlying medical issues.
These data points provide the foundation for your customized nutrition plan, which may include a personalized exercise program. Your nutrition specialist may also recommend various associated wellness solutions, such as nutrition and fitness education, mindfulness training, meditation, and even a field trip to your favorite grocery store for a quick primer on nutrition labels.
Call High Quality Home Therapy in Stamford, Connecticut, and Rye, New York, today or use our online tool to schedule an appointment if you are ready to begin your journey toward a healthy relationship with food.