It’s always tempting to fall for the latest diet fad, especially when something super-tempting is posted on your favourite timeline! Seemed like a good idea at the time, right? You were seduced by the promise of short-term benefits, only to realise weeks down the line when you feel lousy (and probably with meagre results) when you realised you have been depriving your body of vital nutrients. It's an all too familiar scenario we see played out every time a new diet fad hits the streets. Here are 5 diets that we do not recommend ..
1. Juice cleansing diets
You can not rely solely on the nutrients from fruit alone, so the fruit diet will have to be used in tandem with another diet. It can, however, be used in moderation with some health benefits. Rely solely on a juice diet and you will be depriving your body of vital nutrients, proteins and fats it needs for important functions.2. Calorie counting diets
2. Calorie counting
The notion of burning more calories than we consume seems to makes sense. However, using calorie counting as the primary way to lose weight is wrong, even potentially counter-productive. Consuming 3000 calories while burning On the surface, it seems like consuming 2,500 calories a day while burning 3000 sounds like the ideal way to lose weight but not everything is as it seems.
Calorie counting ignores how your body uses the calories you consume in your diet. The source of the calories is what matters.
When we eat a carb-laden meal like spaghetti, our Gastrointestinal tract breaks down carbs into sugars, resulting in a blood sugar spike. Our pancreas then produces insulin allowing sugar to enter the bloodstream and our cells as energy or stored as fat. With high blood sugar levels our bodies will not burn fat for fuel. Meaning if we consume our calories from the wrong foods, our bodies will struggle to burn fat and we will struggle to lose weight.
3. Atkins diet
Everyone must have heard about the Atkins diet. It has been around for what seems like ever. The Atkins is a low carb diet that seduces people in with promises of rapid weight loss. It's a misconception that a low carb diet is a healthy diet. Far from it, and your heart may suffer. It's not really a sustainable diet that you can follow in the long term, so avoid.
4. Carnivore diet
Sounds 'Macho', however consuming predominately meat with, perhaps, eggs and cheese is also unsustainable and unhealthy. Eating an unbalanced diet high in protein but also unhealthy saturated fat and cholesterol, instead of a balanced diet containing fruits and vegetables is not to be advised no matter what the promises say.
5. The 5-bite diet
It goes like this .. you can eat what you want, but only five bites of it! Developed by obesity doctor Alwin Lewis, you skip breakfast
Say it again! ..no breakfast?
..and eat only five bites of food for lunch, five more for dinner. Never has the expression 'biting off more than you can chew' been so apt! So this is a diet based around small portions and denial. So from a health perspective it relies on eating nutrient-dense foods to give your body the fuel it needs. However if we go back to the calorie counting diet (also to be avoided for different reason), 5 bites of the most calorific food only represents about 1,000 calories a day. Compare that to the health guidelines of 2000/2500 for a woman/man and you will see why this is a fad diet to avoid.
