Fad Diets

Losing weight seems to be an obsession that is hard to avoid these days. It is difficult to turn on the television, read a newspaper or pick up a magazine without seeing or hearing about diets, weight loss or obesity. When it comes to over the top sensationalism over shedding pounds the Internet takes the cake.

Whether they come in the form of unsolicited commercial email messages or online classified ads, offers for seemingly magical diet programs are hard to miss on the world wide web. Some of the most popular are 3-day diets that focus on specific foods such as grapefruit, tuna fish, cabbage soup or chicken soup. They claim that if you combine certain foods there will be a powerful effect that melts fat away.

One such diet even uses the name of a famous medical institution in Minnesota, despite the fact that this clinic has never endorsed such a weight loss program.

For most overweight men and women who are otherwise essentially healthy, it would probably not do them significant harm to eat only a half of a grapefruit, a slice of toast and a cup of black coffee every day for three days, but most experts on diet and nutrition would agree that any weight lost during such a fad diet would quickly be put back on after the 3-day starvation was over.

Even more mainstream diets such as Dr. Atkins, the Zone and South Beach programs are difficult for some people to stick to on the regular basis that is required for weight loss to be permanent.

One diet that seems to be different from the others is based not on counting calories and reducing carbohydrates but instead it advocates eating foods with a lower glycemic index rating. The glycemic index, or GI, is a scale that rates different foods on their effect on the body’s blood sugar level. Common foods that have very high GI ratings are sugar, white flour, potatoes and white rice. Advocates of low-GI diets say that simply by making a few substitutions that reduce the amount of high-GI ingredients, people can not only lose weight but also gain other health benefits such as lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels.

Some of the easiest of such substitutions are to eat brown rice instead of white, baked goods made with whole wheat instead of white flour, sweet potatoes instead of white ones and sugar substitutes such as stevia.

When it comes to fad diets that promise miraculous weight loss, it is best to remember the old adage that those things which seem too good to be true are probably not true.