You’ve probably seen dozens of too-good-to-be-true advertisements. They say they’ll help you lose 10, maybe 20 pounds, in less than a week. Sounds fantastic, right? Well, most of these fad diets don’t work on the long-term. If and when they work, they can have significant negative effects on your health.
The Queen of All Fad Diets: The Grapefruit Diet
Take the Grapefruit Diet. This fad diet is popular because it promises huge, unrealistic results. But it is as hopeless as it is unhealthy for you. The grapefruit fad diet plays on the fact that low calorie diet helps cut down the bulge. But there’s a twist. You have to eat only a grapefruit for every meal. Since the 1930s, the Grapefruit Diet got a few names- The Hollywood Diet and the Mayo Diet. What propelled the Grapefruit Diet into fad diet stardom is the magical life-enhancing myth of grapefruits.
Most people are led to believe that the enzymes in grapefruits, when combined with protein, give birth to a fat burning process on steroids. The sad thing is weight loss has nothing to do with burning fat. To lose weight, you have to lose the excess water in your body.
The reality is the Grapefruit Diet works because of one thing. A grapefruit every meal means you are getting anywhere between 800 to 1, 000 calories per meal. That’s way below what you need to function throughout your day. Your body tries to compensate by using it’s calories reserve.
You end up losing weight over the short term, but when you stop the diet, you pick up a bulge.
Most fad diets work on the same principle. They ask you to starve yourself. You get instant results alright, but when you go back to regular, healthy eating, you gain all the pounds you lost.
The seesaw results make people give up on dieting entirely. But if they followed a proper dieting plan, they’d realize long-lasting, and life-changing effects.
Eating a grapefruit for every meal is not healthy, under any standards. Yes, a grapefruit is packed with vitamin C, but your body needs more than that to function properly.
Eating Right For Your Body To Beat the Bulge:
In a lot of cases, you don’t have to starve yourself to lose weight. All you have to do is avoid certain foods that make your body retain loads of water. Always go for a dieting plan that recommends full healthy meals. Stay away from diets that ask you to starve yourself in order to lose weight. Learn about proper portion sizes and most of all, MOVE everyday on a daily basis for at least thirty consecutive minutes!!