Types of popular fad diets

By Weight Loss Consultant • Related • Filed Under

As we look more and more around the world we notice a very strong trend to be healthier. We realize that across the United States we are the fattest nation in the world and that is a bitter pill to swallow. We live very busy lives and find it difficult to cook healthy meals and as such we find ourselves stopping in at the drive-thru because it is cheap and easy. We lose sight of exercise because our schedules just do not seem to permit it.

Fad diets exist to promise you great successes over a short period of time. They include ingesting a simple drink several times a day, a pill or some off the wall counting program. There are, however, some diet plans that lead you to believe they are fads when in fact they are not – such as Richard Simmons. His diets come off as fads but are very grounded in real world nutritional science but given to you in an easy to understand way. But what are some of the fad diets? You know you’ve heard of them, but here is a quick list of fad diets and the basics behind them:

Controlled carbs
Controlling your carbohydrate intake is important to any diet, but some take it too far. One example is Atkins which cuts out all carbs including the good ones and has you eating a lot of meat regardless of cut. Other carb controller fad diets are the Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet, Protein Power, The Zone and Sugar Busters.

High carb & low fat
High carb diets want you to eat a lot of grains and pastas and cutting out the majority of fat you may have been ingesting. It accentuates what Atkins doesn’t: good carbohydrates. These include the Dean Ornish program, Good Carbohydrate Revolution and Pritikin Principle.

Portion size control
This is just as it sounds. You are limiting the size of your portions. This is commonplace in any successful diet. The problem is that these diets don’t care what you are eating – just how much and they include Dr. Shapiro’s Picture Perfect Weight Loss and Volumetrics.

Food combining
Truly a fad diet, food combining allows you to put together certain foods to generate certain effects. This diet strategy is vastly unproven. Fir for Life and Somersizing are the main forerunner of this fad.

Besides the above we also have liquid diets like the Cambridge Diet and Slim-Fast. Don’t forget diet pills and herbal remedies like dexatrim, alli and hydroxycut. There are, of course, others that don’t fit into any category like the Blood Type Diet, Macrobiotics and the Mayo Clinic Diet which, incidentally, has nothing to do with the Mayo Clinic.

Spotting a fad diet is not that cut and dry so take into consider the seven “rules” of weeding out real diets for fads.

  1. Diet plans that avoid food groups.
  2. Eliminating entire food groups.
  3. Ignoring the good properties of a food group due to the bad.
  4. Anything that involved “detoxing”.
  5. All liquid diets.
  6. Pills without doctor supervision.
  7. It’s your body and your life – nothing beats natural dieting.

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