Maybe it’s the hard economic times we’re experiencing but fad diets seem to be more and more common these days. People who are experiencing a hard time financially hope for a quick and an easy way out of their money problems and maybe that attitude carries over into the struggle to lose weight.
One diet popular during the last great depression was heavily promoted by the citrus farming interests and was called the Hollywood 18 Day Diet. All you had to do was to eat 600 calories a day of nothing but grapefruit and oranges. If you didn’t lose weight I’m sure it at least succeeded in keeping you regular.
Another oldie but goodie is the Cabbage Soup Diet. This old timer is still around despite being over 30 years old. This one was sometimes called the Mayo Clinic Diet to give it a certain air of authority. This was despite the fact that the actual Mayo Clinic repeatedly denied having anything to do with it. Apparently, according to this one, if you eat nothing but cabbage soup you will lose weight. Possibly inspired by the siege of Leningrad, this one sounds like a good plan if you don’t mind the accompanying loss of muscle mass, energy, hair and skin tone as well as the long term damage to your body from lack of vitamins and minerals.
The latest fad in dieting also comes from Hollywood which appears to be the nexus of the weight loss universe. This one claims that the key to losing weight is just to dial it back a few years and eat nothing but baby food. Apparently 14 jars of baby food a day is what you’ll be eating on this one. To give it a little extra gravitas, reports have been cooked up that Jennifer Aniston swears by this one. Her name seems to carry a lot of weight when it comes to dieting despite the fact that she denies any association with it or any recent consumption of baby food.
However, doctors and health specialists are not completely giving the the thumbs down to the baby food diet. Babies seem to thrive on those little jars of mush and, after all, it’s balanced and healthy so in that respect it won’t do you too much harm. The problem is, in a very short time you will stop eating baby food. After that, the reason you became overweight is still there and you’ll go right back to your old eating habits.
If your goal is to lose weight and keep it off, you will have to give up the idea of a quick fix. You didn’t gain all that extra weight quickly and losing it will also take time. After the fad diets come and go there seems to be three golden rules that always seem to work.
1. Give up junk food. All your weight loss efforts will do down the drain if you cannot keep yourself from eating junk and processed foods. These foods have high calorie content and will add to your pounds.
2. Eat lots of small meals. Five or six small meals is much better for your body than one huge one. When you eat, your body takes what you need for metabolism and whatever’s left gets stored as fat. Stop eating before you get to that point and skip the fat saving step.
3. Make exercise a part of your day. If you’re serious about losing weight, exercise is a must have. There’s an added bonus that you eat even more because you’re burning even more. And as you workout, your metabolic rate is increasing and this rate will stay higher even when you’re not at the gym. Also, the extra muscle you gain will burn calories at an even higher rate.
If you can find a diet plan that incorporates these three principals and stick with it, you can’t help but succeed in the weight loss battle.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.