Fad Diets Pros and Cons

Almost like clockwork right after the holiday season you can count on a number of fad diets to hit the airwaves. Some are in the form of special exercises while others are mostly about a new diet product. But whatever it is, they all promise the same thing.

Fad diets are as sure as the coming spring which is what they promise you’ll be slim and trim for when it happens. These diets come in all shapes and sizes, but they all promise to reduce your shape considerably.

What is a Fad Diet?

The easiest way to describe a fad diet is that it is the “latest thing”. In other words, this is the hottest diet that more people are going on at the moment. It might be low-carb, no grains, low-fat or some other type of “low” or “no” system that is designed to help you shed the excess fat quickly and easily.

Fad diets are quite numerous, but they mostly die a quick death once summer has arrived. By the following year just after New Year’s Day you can count on another round of diets promising to be the end-all, be-all that will get rid of that excess flab.

The Pros of a Fad Diet

The truth is that some fad diets actually incorporate good, healthy eating principles that may actually work. In many cases, the people that have actually succeeded in losing weight are the ones who stuck to the good principles of the diet and made them part of their eating habits.

Another plus is that fad diets do help some people jump start to a healthier way of living. In essence, it is the indirect approach where someone sees a fad diet and does not jump on the bandwagon, but instead decides to eat healthier and exercise to lose the weight.

The Cons of a Fad Diet

Most fad diets are simply too restrictive for people to follow for very long. Starting with the second or third week there is some cheating followed by a complete collapse as the diet itself simply does not allow enough food for a person to eat and still be comfortable. A rigid menu is a sure sign that the diet program will not work for very long.

The key problem is that it took time for you to gain the weight, so it will take time for you to lose the weight. A “quick start” program that helps you lose weight fast usually means water weight that will quickly come back once you start eating normally again.

Conclusion

It takes time, effort and commitment to lose the excess weight and keep it off. This means that you will need to eat healthy and exercise so that you can build up the muscle tissues that will help burn away the fat.

Fad diets are simply designed to fail because they are all about short term strategies that simply do not work in the long run. However, fad diets do serve the purpose of alerting and motivating us to lose the weight properly if we eat healthier and exercise.