Do Quick Weight Loss Diets Work?

The American Heart Association says that adopting healthy eating habits permanently, rather than impatiently pursuing quick diets in hopes of losing unwanted pounds in a few days through fad quick weight loss plans.

What is a fad diet?  It's a well marketed diet with some crazy scheme to lose weight in an impossible manner, often by eating nothing but one food like a cabbage.

One food or one type of food is generally overemphasized with fad quick weight loss diets. They violate the first principle of good nutrition which is to eat a balanced diet including a variety of foods. If you are able to stay on such a diet for more than a few weeks, you may develop nutritional deficiencies, because no one type of food has all the elements a human being needs for good health. One such diet is the Cabbage Soup Diet. This so-called fat-burning soup is eaten mostly with fruits and vegetables. The diet supposedly helps heart patients lose 10–17 pounds in seven days prior to surgery.  On top of not working to lose weight, this diet lacks essential nutrients and can cause serious health issues.  Pixies, elves and fairies, or even cabbages, can't provide magical weight loss.  That's why you should eat moderate amounts from all the food groups rather than cutting out everything but a cabbage and water.

These crazy diets also ignore a second important principle of good nutrition which is that eating should be enjoyable.. It's impossible to stay on these diets for a long time because they're so monotonous.  Imagine eating cabbage soup, nothing but cabbage soup, for even a few days much less for a whole week.  By Wednesday you'd dread meal time, and by Friday you'd never again want to smell a cabbage much less eat the soup.  If you make it to Sunday you might die of a heart attack before you ever again tasted real food.

Boredom isn't the only reason fad diets aren't good ones.  Most don't talk about exercise, such as aerobics for 30 minutes a day every day. Physical activity helps maintain weight loss, while physical inactivity is a major risk factor for heart disease and stroke.  When you hear a diet that mentions “no need for exercise” run for the hills, or at least run on a treadmill.

Quick weight loss is possible. But if a program sounds too good to be true, it is.

Do you want to drop a few pounds?  Then go to Diets That Work as well as Quickest Way To Lose Weight to discover diets that are successful.