Fad diets come and go-the quick fixes to a weight problem that has plagued you and kept you from playing football in the yard with your children, fitting in to that perfect cocktail dress, or comfortably sitting in an airplane seat for a cross-country flight.
Whether it is a week of drinking a concoction of lemon juice, cayenne pepper, and tomato juice or 3-days of fasting followed by a week of only eating cheese and red meat, fad diets will actually do more harm to your body than good.
Yes, you will probably see an immediate change in your weight as a result of doing one of these fad diets.
Yes, the weight change will most likely be a decrease in your total weight.
But, and there is a big but, you will be setting yourself up for failure and potentially doing irreparable damage to your body.
What these fad diets fail to tell you is that by drastically altering your eating and exercising habits, you can actually put your body in to shock by depriving it of the nutrients it needs.
In addition, these diets can detrimentally affect your body's metabolism.
Most often these diets require you to eat a certain amount of food on a set schedule.
Your body has a natural ability to determine when it requires nourishment and when it is at capacity and full.
Altering these natural needs and overpowering them with strict plans can cause your metabolism to change and in some cases decrease over time leading to long-term effects that outlast the fad diet.
Your best way to combat the dangers and pitfalls of the fad diet is to participate in a medical weight loss program that is supervised by a trained and authorized doctor and medical team.
Under the guidance of a doctor, losing weight using a scientifically tested method that provides ample nutrients for your body and maintains a healthy metabolism is the best way to go about dieting.