Do Quick-Fix Diets Work?

A big trend these days is the “diet of the week” – you’ve
probably heard of dozens of these in your lifetime. They’ll
rapidly become a fad for a short period of time – eat only this
or that, or take a special shake, and you’ll lose the pounds
rapidly. They all promise quick results – but do these diets
really work?

The answer in most cases is no. Usually you can get a short term
loss of weight fairly easily with any diet that changes your
eating habits dramatically – if you cut off the calories, most
people are going to see significant short term weight loss.
That’s why they always focus on losing a certain amount of
pounds by a certain date – they know most people will. But the
other side to the coin is that most people won’t keep them off.
It’s much harder to keep the pounds from coming back than it is
to get rid of a chunk of weight by altering your diet. You’ve
already gotten the “shock” benefit, and eventually your system
is going to return to normal. And in many cases, you’ll have
done damage to your health by abruptly changing your nutrition
levels – it’s just not safe to be excluding entire classes of
food from your diet in most cases. The better, and more
traditional course, is to just start eating the foods that
everyone knows are healthy and do regular exercise. It’s the
approach everyone hates – there’s no time, and it’s hard work,
and many people just don’t want to. But if you really want to
lose the weight and keep it off, it’s the only way to go.

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