 There
has been a major explosion of fad diets over the past few years. This is due
to the fanatical desire of almost everybody to lose weight. But more than
just weight loss, people want to lose weight the easy way. With some combination
of the right foods, magically losing weight is a dream of everyone, yet it
is an illusion. People desire to lose weight above all without exercise. Exercise
is a fundamental part of health and weight loss, yet is considered a hassle
by most. That is where fad diets come along, promising people a fast, easy
way to lose weight, without exercise or giving up foods we love to eat. Yet
the gimmick behind almost every fad diet is the illusion of weight loss; many
of the diets appear to provide lasting alternatives to eating properly and
exercising, yet do no such thing.
So why do all of these diets show up? Because people will pay through the
nose for weight loss! There is millions of dollars to be made in the diet
industry, since everyone wants to look good, and we are not taught how to
do it ourselves. As you will come to understand, fad diets' biggest shortcoming
is that there is no change in our behavior. Once the initial weight loss of
the diet is achieved, there is nothing that shows us how to maintain the weight
and to avoid foods that will undermine our health. Being sedentary and eating
below our calorie requirements are both ways to prevent us from being healthy.
One thing we all must come to terms with is that weight loss is worthless
if it is not done through proper diet management combined with exercise on
a regular basis.
With this in mind, we can realize that by eating a low amount of food, we
lose weight only by starving our bodies. It is not a smart idea to deprive
your body of necessary nutrients, vitamins, and minerals. And then when it
comes to avoiding exercise, realize that a lack of exercise is a major cause
of obesity, as well as having been shown to make us far more likely to suffer
from diseases and bone fragility later in life. There is a delicate balance
between exercise and nutrition that we must master in order to manage our
weight through our lives.
Let's take a major fad diet and explain where it goes wrong. The Atkins Diet
was the biggest fad diet in the last decade. The claim of Atkins was that by
cutting carbohydrates from our diet, we will lose weight without any exercise.
Did it work? Yes, but mostly NO. The idea was that by depriving your body of
carbs, it would have to use fat and protein to provide cells with energy. This
meant that you could eat all the fat and meat you want, as long as you don't
eat carbs. The main problem here is that the weight you lose is dependant on
avoiding carbs completely, and that you regain all of your lost weight the second
you stray from the diet. This wouldn't be so bad if you could avoid carbs your
whole life, but eating large amounts of fat and protein is very unhealthy!
Much of the weight loss achieved while following the diet was water mass. Since
carbs are stored with an envelope of water surrounding them, when they disappear
so does the water. But when you do eat carbs again, the water comes back too.
But worse than this, there are many negative effects of eating only protein
and fat. Obviously by eating a lot of meat, we consume a lot of saturated fat;
this has been shown to contribute to obesity and heart disease later in life.
Also, in order to digest protein, our stomachs use calcium to metabolize the
protein. When we consume large amounts, our bodies draw calcium from the bones
to provide enough. This leads to osteoporosis in the later stages of life.
Also, the Atkins diet puts stress on the digestive tract to eliminate by-products
of fat metabolizing. This process of using fat as energy produces ketones which
need to be eliminated. This strains the liver on the way out, and can even be
fatal in some cases. Knowing all these facts, the Atkins diet would be a bad
idea now, wouldn't it? But the problem is that when a fad diet arrives, there
is typically not enough research done to uncover all the effects soon enough.
All people know is that there is initial weight loss and that's all that matters.
The money is made in the early stages, and the repercussions are dealt with
later. That is what makes proper diet and exercise so important.
By knowing and understanding the processes of your body, you can overcome weight
issues. But realize that weight loss is not the kind of thing that can be fixed
overnight. It is a gradual process that requires time and patience, and strong
knowledge of how to maintain your successes. Diet needs to be combined with
exercise in order to lose weight; if not, you're doing more harm than good.
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