Can Diets Make You Fat?

These days everyone wants a quick fix. Need that new jacket? There’s next day delivery. Craving that pizza? Order it and it’ll be at your door in 20 minutes. Weight loss is no different. People want to drink a magic green juice before they go to bed, and wake up a size 8. Its unrealistic. 

However, it doesn't stop us trying everything in the book to make it work. There’s the ‘Cabbage soup diet’, the ’Vinegar Diet’, even to the extreme ‘Baby food diet’. People will try anything to lose a quick 10lbs before an event. In theory it all sounds great, until reality hits when you sit down to a plate of baby food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The truth is that these diets are very unsustainable and are a short term answer to weight loss. According to the Clinical director of weight and eating disorders program at the University of Pennsylvania, only 5% of people who go on crash diets keep the weight off. 

You know yourself, the minute you decide you’re going to deprive yourself of that chocolate bar or that Chinese for dinner, you will start to crave it. So when you come off the strict diet you will binge on these foods that you missed and therefore overeat. 

As crash diets make you lose a lot of weight very quickly and in an unnatural way it is often water weight you have lost rather than burning fat. So when you return to normal eating the water weight comes back. They are a quick fix and often don't emphasise the importance of a healthy diet and physical activity which is key to burning fat and keeping weight off in a healthy sustainable way. 

So next time you fancy losing a few lbs, why don't you consider some of the healthier alternatives rather than starving yourself for weeks at a time?

Next weeks post: Are Happy Meals Making You Unhappy?