The truth about fad diets

That cool thing that everyone is doing.

Everyone. 

You know you want to do it, because it seems like everyone else is. Then, given a certain amount of time, you find it was a fad. 

Like this. 

Remember Slap Bracelets?

And this.

Pogs

Who can forget?

But I saved the best for last....

The Rat Tail Pony Tail. This took some serious commitment.

Fads. They come and go in every facet of what we do. This includes in our dietary habits.... Cabbage Soup Diet anyone? There are quite a few out there now that I wanted to specifically talk about.

First and foremost I want to encourage you to never use the term diet. Psychologically, when you are telling yourself you are on a diet, you are mentally restricting yourself. You are unknowingly setting yourself up for failure. If you consistently tell yourself you cannot have anything because its not on your diet plan, you will eventually give in to your craving most likely binge eating. I never tell myself I am on a diet. Eating better is about changing your lifestyle. If I want something, I will have it, in moderation of course. I've maintained the weight loss that I sustained for over 5 years with this method of thinking. Try thinking of what you CAN have and not what you CAN'T have.

The Atkins Diet

With this diet, they frown upon carb ingestion. They say you can eat as much meat as you want, as much cheese as you want as long as you stay away from the carbs. Sounds too good to be true? It is. Why? Meat and cheese are incredibly high in fat. In this, you are also limiting the amount of nutrients you get by eating vegetables and fruit. Do you lose weight? Sure. Is it good for long term weight loss? No. Why? The human body runs on carbohydrates. It takes them and turns them into ADP. Thats what fuels your muscles. Its the gas to your muscle 'engine'. Temporarily it may help, but it is not something that overall is going to be beneficial for you as you are likely to gain the weight back that you lost in addition to raising your cholesterol. 

The Zone Diet

This diet they recommend you follow a diet of three meals a day with two snacks. Each of these meals should consist of 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 30 percent healthy fat. How does one determine how much of what to eat? Its all about measuring with your hand and your eyes. There is no scientific method to breaking this down. They do have books and recipes to assist you. The good part? You can choose what foods you like to eat.... as long as it follows the guidelines. This diet doesn't restrict you as much as some of the others, for instance, Atkins. It does allow you to eat more or less the daily allowance of what you should be consuming to remain healthy. The downside is the preparation time to make the meals. 

Lastly I wanted to talk about the diet that most people are following these days. 

The Paleo Diet. 

This was created as something that goes back to human ancestry. Basically, you are to eat what cavemen ate in the Paleolithic era by eating meats and vegetables that our hunter/gatherer ancestors did. This sounds relatively easy. Eat meat, eat vegetables. It sounds good, in theory. However, I think that a lot of these 'Paleo' recipes that they've come up with get lost in translation. After all, I am in serious doubt that cavemen had access to items in some of the recipes I've seen such as Sriacha, fish sauce, sesame oil, etc. In doing a search online, I have found '100% Paleo' recipes that include ingredients like sun dried tomatoes packed in oil and herbs as well as ...canned enchilada sauce. I thought the idea of eating Paleo was to stay away from canned items because of the amount of preservatives in them. What people are doing is creating these recipes to try to conform today's lifestyle to what they want to consider a diet. Sriacha is mostly hot peppers, sugar, vinegar and salt. . . Fish sauce? Did the cavemen use rocks to beat the fish and make a paste before they lightly sautéed their meat? 

There are sites you can order 'Paleo approved' desserts. Such as a bar that contains coconut oil, almond flour, vanilla, and many more items that I find hard to believe that a caveman would have in his pantry. This diet does have good principles. It helps you to strive to eat more vegetables, better grains (such as quinoa) and quality, lean cuts of meat. But is it truly 'Paleo' to be eating the items in the recipes I mentioned? People want to believe that it is. I personally think its no more than eating a gluten free diet. The similarities are striking. However, removing say, taco night from your normal routine to just replace it with fish sauce and Sriacha doused meat in the long run isn't going to get you anywhere any faster. 

The one thing that people always do is believe. They want to believe that what they are doing is working. They want to believe that if they make a change to their dietary habits that it will make a difference. And they want to believe that whatever new thing that is coming up the pike might be the one thing that helps them. 

I have an answer for you. It won't. 

You know what will work? A healthy approach to eating food and exercise. Thats it. That is the magic bullet. I worked my ass off for several years, learning along the way what did work and what didn't. I learned to slowly remove the things that I once loved out of my daily eating habits and moved them into my 'once in a great while' eating habits. I learned to make the things I love, just a little bit healthier. I learned healthier substitutes for the items that I liked to use. And I exercised. A lot. 

You can get to where you want and its your choice on how you get there. I am by no means a nutritionist or an expert when it comes to these things.

I'm just a girl who lost 132 lbs doing it my way.

You can read US News and Weekly's report on the most popular diets and their rankings at http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/best-overall-diets