Why Fad Diets Will Not Solve a Weight Problem

It isn’t easy to decide to lose weight when you know it is going to involve months of religiously watching what you eat. It is a real hassle changing your eating habits just to lose weight, but when you don’t like the way you look and are worried you’re getting so heavy that your health could start to suffer you may opt to do something positive and take action. Instead of aiming for gradual weight loss which can be achieved through healthy eating and regular exercise, though, there is a good chance you will try to lose weight as quickly as possible by going on a diet.

After all, there is no shortage of fad diets out there to choose from. Whenever you pick up a woman’s magazine there will be a headline telling you that inside there are tips to help you lose 10 pounds in a week. You become fixated on losing lots of weight within a short space of time, because you want to get back to living normally, rather than counting calories forever. You want to be able to go to a restaurant with your partner and eat whatever you want without feeling guilty and to go drinking with friends without worrying about your calorie intake.

You therefore choose a diet plan that offers rapid results with not that much effort on your part. You don’t have to think about what you’re going to eat when it is all laid out for you; you don’t have to make time for exercise when the diet is so low in calories you’re bound to lose weight, anyway. All you have to do is stick to the diet and watch the weight fall off you. It might be a challenge at first, but every time you step on the scales and see the numbers decreasing you know that it is worth it, which keeps you motivated to continue.

However, before long following the diet becomes rather tedious. You may have lost a bit of weight and so you decide you deserve a treat or you’ve had a bad day and can’t be bothered with the diet for one day. When you’ve broken your diet once, though, it becomes easier to do it again and eventually you give up on the diet altogether. This comes as no surprise since fad diets are there to encourage rapid weight loss, but are not meant to be followed for long periods of time. They do not prepare you for what is needed to maintain a healthy weight and so you simply go back to the habits with which you are most familiar.

Clearly, then, fad diets will not solve a weight problem when they merely get you to focus on the short term. Instead of looking for ways to lose weight at a sustainable rate you take steps that you hope will enable you to reach your goal weight within a short space of time, so that you won’t have to worry about your weight again. It doesn’t quite work like that, though, since you have to be prepared to control your calorie intake if you want to prevent yourself regaining weight. Unfortunately, despite the high rate of failure when it comes to fad diets, people are still drawn to them, as everyone wants to believe it will be different next time and that they will succeed.