Buy Walking VideosQuestion of the Week: Fad Diets
All fad diets work for a reason. Sometimes it’s because they lower your calorie intake by limiting your food choices. Other times its because they promise results so strongly that the placebo effect takes place.
What fad diets have you tried?
For how long did each one work?
What made you finally give them up?
What will you do in the future to evaluate whether another diet is simply a fad diet or a healthy way of eating?
The Question of the Week is meant to be an Inner Workout for you. Find some time during the week and allow yourself to write the answers to the questions posted. You can write them on paper, on a word processor or here in the comments section. Whatever works for you as long as you do it.
Keep writing until you find out something about yourself that you didn’t know before. I’ve also heard that it works to keep writing until you cry, but that doesn’t really work for me. Whatever works for you. Just keep writing until it feels right.
Previous: FDA Denies Green Tea Cardiovascular Health Claim
Next: Training for The Century Ride
May 22nd, 2006 at 6:12 am
My mom put me on this dreadful fruit in the morning diet that I felt was useless. I love fruit but hate to be told what to eat. I also can overeat on fruit. My aunt gave me these horrible that were macrobiotic soups. I did slim fast and it left me hungry. I preferred the bars but they were expensive at the time. I will eat a slim fast bar now and then but count it with my points. I made up my own soup diet where each meal was a can of soup and a yogurt.
The other fad diets other than my soup diet didn’t work at all. The Soup diet was too incomplete and I couldn’t eat like that in the long term basses.
May 22nd, 2006 at 11:01 am
Let’s see… I’ve tried the cabbage soup diet, SlimFast (that lasted a week tops), the T-Factor Diet, and the South Beach Diet. I’m currently on Weight Watchers (which I don’t consider to be a fad diet, but others might).
I lost a little weight on all the diets I tried, but I didn’t stay on any of them long enough to make any real progress or a lasting change. Partly, I hated the idea of being told that in order to lose weight I was going to have to give up things, but mostly I wasn’t ready to really make the lifestyle change to healthy eating.
When I made up my mind to really lose weight, I joined Weight Watchers because I looked over the program and thought it offered the best of both worlds: education about eating in appropriate amounts and modification of my habits, combined with the ability to be flexible and have a slice of garlic bread if I wanted to. I’m a firm believer, now, in a diet that teaches how to adapt to real-life situations, which I feel many of the fads fail at. (Alternately, the fad diets produce people who, for example, eat up all the meat at your dinner party because they “can’t” eat anything else, thus leaving your other guests with nothing but salad, potatoes and a hint of meat… not that I’m bitter or anything. eyeroll)
The other thing I found very important in changing my eating habits was to educate myself on the food industry and on what’s going into the foods we were eating. We’ve switched to organic as much as we can, and cut out processed foods wherever possible. That in tandem with Weight Watchers has given me the ability to make long-term changes to the way I eat. I won’t need another fad, if I can keep the good habits I’ve established thus far.
May 23rd, 2006 at 5:20 am
I’m a healthy eater, but at 42 yrs old I’ve let my routine workouts slip this past winter and am carrying around 15 extra lbs. Have a date this weekend and have thrown what I know about nutrition out the window and tried to Atkins for 2 weeks. (very difficult for me….no fruit, veggies and I avg. 6-8 servings a day!) After 1 1/2 miserable weeks of meat and egg eating (yuk) and only a 4 lb. loss, I am giving up on this fad, and going back to my healthy eating and realize that the best methods are good nutrition and daily fitness routines……so much for quick fixes!!
May 24th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Darice I lost 100 pounds with weight watchers and medical studies back up that it’s not a fad diet and that it works slightly more than most other programs. I know WW won’t work for everyone but it isn’t a fad. 🙂
May 26th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Atkins Diet. Last year summer. Lasted only 10 days which I lost 7 pounds only because I didn’t eat much. Had to get off because I could not stand being told what to eat and how much. Plus….nothing sweet on the low carb diet! Went back to journal writing and healthy food choices.