The American Heart Association recommends 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 hair brained scheme to lose weight in an impossible manner, often by eating nothing but one food like a cabbage.
Quick-weight-loss diets generally put far too much focus on one particular food or type of food. They don’t include a variety of foods or a healthy balance, a violation of the first principle of good nutrition, eat a balanced diet that includes 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 nutrients a human being needs for good health. One such diet is the Cabbage Soup Diet. The myth of this diet is that cabbage soup is some sort of fat dissolving potion.
People supposedly lost 10-17 pounds in only a week, eating primarily cabbage soup. Even if the weight loss claim were true, all the damage due to a lack of a host of important nutrients would far outweigh (pun intended) the benefits of losing the weight. Pixies, elves and fairies, or even cabbages, can’t create magical weight loss. Moderation in eating all the major food groups is the best bet.
The second principle of good nutrition is that eating should be enjoyable. You think eating only cabbages every day is enjoyable?. These diets are so monotonous and bland that it’s almost impossible to stay on them for long periods. Consider a week on the Cabbage Soup Diet.
By Wednesday you’d dread meal time, and by Friday you’d never again want to hear about 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. Many don’t include exercise, for example, walking 30 minutes most or all days of the week. 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.
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