When you are trying to find a diet to help you lose weight, it is important that you choose a diet that is healthy. Despite their popularity, fad diets or crash diets, such as the cabbage soup diet, aren't healthy and don't lead to long term weight loss. Luckily, most fad diets have similar characteristics that make them fairly easy to spot.
Claims
One reason why fad diets rise quickly in popularity is that they promise rapid weight loss. These diets often showcase dieters in before and after photos as a way to lure in new dieters. Often, testimonials accompany the photos. Some statements are made by people who are noted as weight loss or nutrition experts; however, these experts are usually paid endorsers of the diet system. Many fad diets claim that following their system can lead to weight loss, without the dieter having to give up any favorite foods -- even fatty foods, notes the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Food Choices
Most fad diets don't encourage you to eat a healthy, balanced diet. Instead, these diets usually severely restrict your food choices and require you to eat a very low calorie diet while you are following the plan. Some examples include a diet that allows you to eat anything you want except carbohydrates, or a diet that instructs you to eat only a single food. These diets don't provide your body with the nutrition it needs, which requires you to eat foods from all of the food groups.
Exercise Requirements
There are two extremes when it comes to the exercise requirements of fad diets. The first is that the fad diet won't require you to exercise at all. The other is that the fad diet requires you to follow an extremely difficult exercise routine. Neither of these requirements is safe. A safe and healthy diet program will encourage you to exercise on a daily basis for at least 30 minutes in addition to your regular daily activities.
Considerations
Fad diets can lead to a cycle of yo-yo dieting. This is a cycle begins when you follow the diet and lose weight. When you stop following the diet, you gain weight, so you start to follow another diet -- and the cycle continues to repeat itself. This affects your metabolism, usually by slowing it down, which makes it easier to gain weight and more difficult to lose weight. Epigee notes that this change in your metabolism can last months to years after you stop the fad diet.
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