So, why avoid fad diets?
Well one of the many reasons why you should avoid these diets is because trying to eat different food to what you are used to, to what you have grown up with, to what your friends and family eat, to what the wider society around you eats, IS HARD!
OK, just because something is hard does not mean it is not worth doing in and of itself, but it does mean that you are going to need some real willpower an perseverance to do it so here's the question - if someone already has lots of willpower and perseverance when it comes to eating healthily, then why do they need to diet in the first place?
Which is one of the reason why the failure rate with these diets is high - a large proportion of people can only stick to them for a limited amount of time. Then, when they fall off the wagon and go back to their old food habits, they put all their weight back on again. And then of course they try another fad diet - guess how that turns out! Einstein's definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
So why is it so hard?
Let's use some examples to drive home why sticking to these diets is so hard.
For instance, you have decided to follow the Paleo diet, which means you need to eat only grass-fed (not grain-fed) meat. Easy to find in your local supermarket? No. So now you have to change your lifestyle to shop somewhere else in addition to the supermarket, adding time and expense to your weekly shop. How long before that becomes tiresome?
Another example, you start to follow the ketogenic diet - no more carbohydrates for you, so no sugar, bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, pizza, sweets or baked goods shall pass your lips. The best way to try and stick to this (or any other diet restriction), particularly if those are some of your favourite foods, would be to make sure those things are no longer in your house - get that temptation out of the way! But that will only work if you can convince everyone you live with - your partner, children, house-mates - to follow the same diet as you, which with the best will in the world is usually going to be a hard-sell! You are likely to either cause a lot of unrest with those you live with or, you are going to have to deal with all those foods still being readily available in your larder, cupboards and deep-freeze, in which case how long before you give in to temptation?
Perhaps you decide to try a vegan diet (in this example purely for health reasons rather than social or environmental considerations) - again, the people you live with are not willing to join you so how long will you cope with the extra time and washing up required for preparing two different meals every breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Then there's eating socially, be it at a restaurant or friend's house. Are you the sort of person with a thick enough skin that you will not mind having to make a fuss about which restaurant you can go to, or having to ask the waiter for the chef to prepare your food differently, or feeling rude when you are the only one in the room who cannot eat the food your friend serves up at a dinner party? That takes a certain single-mindedness, or very patient friends, or it just means you can only hang out with people who are on the same diet as you!
So why do some people swear by these diets?
Admittedly, there are a lot of people out there who are passionate advocates of things like Atkins, Paleo, Ketogenic and so on (or, if there aren't actually a lot of them, certainly they make plenty of noise on the Internet!). So how come, if these diets are as difficult to stick to as I say they are?
Well I can discount some of these people because they are pushing these diets in order to make a buck for themselves, but it is also true that many of them genuinely believe in the health benefits of their chosen diet regime and want other people to enjoy the same benefits. So why do I have a problem with this?
Let's ignore for now whether one person's positive experiences on a particular diet necessarily translates to that diet being "good" for everyone and also let's ignore some of the specific health claims and rationales for some of these diets. At the moment I'm instead discussing whether a typical person can stick to these diets and so the question is whether these diet-advocates are "typical" people in this sense.
I would say a lot of these people are in fact un-typical when it comes to food and health - you can tell from their comments that they have often undertaken loads of research about food and health, they spend hours on the internet reading articles, scientific papers and blogs about the subject and possibly even writing their own blog, they have often tried (and managed to stick to) other healthy eating regimes in the past, and so generally you could say they are a lot more interested, informed and passionate about their health than the average person.
I've said above you'd need to have perseverance and single-mindedness to stick to these diets in the long-term - these diet advocates do indeed tend to have these traits! But that doesn't mean the average person does, and this is something I think these advocates sometimes fail to appreciate. Furthermore, how often do you hear from failed advocates? Think about it - you've posted lots of stuff on the internet about how great a particular diet is and then you fall off the wagon yourself, or your supposedly "cured" health problems start to come back; would you necessarily go back on the internet to tell everyone? I think a lot of people would feel a bit embarrassed or silly doing this, so you can never really be sure what the failure rate is for a particular diet; you tend to hear a lot less about the failures!
So what can you do to lose weight and be more healthy?
Look, modern life makes it all to easy to eat the wrong foods in large quantities and to do little or no exercise. I am not suggesting that getting thinner or more healthy will ever be easy, or that there's some quick fix (unlike the claims of some of these diet regimes!). Nor am I saying you shouldn't try to improve your health just because it might be hard, far from it! But I am saying that this is important enough that you need to give yourself the best chance of succeeding by going about things in the right way.
So by all means try and change your eating regime but try and do so gradually rather than making grand changes that fall by the wayside after a week of agonising self-denial. Also try to move to an eating regime that you can stick to for the long-haul - of the popular diet ideas out there, the Mediterranean diet is probably one of the better ones as it's proven to be healthy, you do not have to deny yourself any major food groups, and the modern Western diet already includes a lot of Mediterranean (usually Italian!) food in it so you won't have problems finding something to eat in the supermarket or at a restaurant.
But a word of warning - if you try to be a bit more Mediterranean then don't kid yourself that eating pizza for every meal is going to help you lose weight! You will still have to think about your Calorie intake if you want to lose weight so think about how Calorie-dense your food is - processed foods often have added sugar and fat that ramps up the Calories, so if you want to be properly Mediterranean then start preparing your own meals.
Well one of the many reasons why you should avoid these diets is because trying to eat different food to what you are used to, to what you have grown up with, to what your friends and family eat, to what the wider society around you eats, IS HARD!
OK, just because something is hard does not mean it is not worth doing in and of itself, but it does mean that you are going to need some real willpower an perseverance to do it so here's the question - if someone already has lots of willpower and perseverance when it comes to eating healthily, then why do they need to diet in the first place?
Which is one of the reason why the failure rate with these diets is high - a large proportion of people can only stick to them for a limited amount of time. Then, when they fall off the wagon and go back to their old food habits, they put all their weight back on again. And then of course they try another fad diet - guess how that turns out! Einstein's definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results".
So why is it so hard?
Let's use some examples to drive home why sticking to these diets is so hard.
For instance, you have decided to follow the Paleo diet, which means you need to eat only grass-fed (not grain-fed) meat. Easy to find in your local supermarket? No. So now you have to change your lifestyle to shop somewhere else in addition to the supermarket, adding time and expense to your weekly shop. How long before that becomes tiresome?
Another example, you start to follow the ketogenic diet - no more carbohydrates for you, so no sugar, bread, potatoes, pasta, rice, pizza, sweets or baked goods shall pass your lips. The best way to try and stick to this (or any other diet restriction), particularly if those are some of your favourite foods, would be to make sure those things are no longer in your house - get that temptation out of the way! But that will only work if you can convince everyone you live with - your partner, children, house-mates - to follow the same diet as you, which with the best will in the world is usually going to be a hard-sell! You are likely to either cause a lot of unrest with those you live with or, you are going to have to deal with all those foods still being readily available in your larder, cupboards and deep-freeze, in which case how long before you give in to temptation?
Perhaps you decide to try a vegan diet (in this example purely for health reasons rather than social or environmental considerations) - again, the people you live with are not willing to join you so how long will you cope with the extra time and washing up required for preparing two different meals every breakfast, lunch and dinner?
Then there's eating socially, be it at a restaurant or friend's house. Are you the sort of person with a thick enough skin that you will not mind having to make a fuss about which restaurant you can go to, or having to ask the waiter for the chef to prepare your food differently, or feeling rude when you are the only one in the room who cannot eat the food your friend serves up at a dinner party? That takes a certain single-mindedness, or very patient friends, or it just means you can only hang out with people who are on the same diet as you!
So why do some people swear by these diets?
Admittedly, there are a lot of people out there who are passionate advocates of things like Atkins, Paleo, Ketogenic and so on (or, if there aren't actually a lot of them, certainly they make plenty of noise on the Internet!). So how come, if these diets are as difficult to stick to as I say they are?
Well I can discount some of these people because they are pushing these diets in order to make a buck for themselves, but it is also true that many of them genuinely believe in the health benefits of their chosen diet regime and want other people to enjoy the same benefits. So why do I have a problem with this?
Let's ignore for now whether one person's positive experiences on a particular diet necessarily translates to that diet being "good" for everyone and also let's ignore some of the specific health claims and rationales for some of these diets. At the moment I'm instead discussing whether a typical person can stick to these diets and so the question is whether these diet-advocates are "typical" people in this sense.
I would say a lot of these people are in fact un-typical when it comes to food and health - you can tell from their comments that they have often undertaken loads of research about food and health, they spend hours on the internet reading articles, scientific papers and blogs about the subject and possibly even writing their own blog, they have often tried (and managed to stick to) other healthy eating regimes in the past, and so generally you could say they are a lot more interested, informed and passionate about their health than the average person.
I've said above you'd need to have perseverance and single-mindedness to stick to these diets in the long-term - these diet advocates do indeed tend to have these traits! But that doesn't mean the average person does, and this is something I think these advocates sometimes fail to appreciate. Furthermore, how often do you hear from failed advocates? Think about it - you've posted lots of stuff on the internet about how great a particular diet is and then you fall off the wagon yourself, or your supposedly "cured" health problems start to come back; would you necessarily go back on the internet to tell everyone? I think a lot of people would feel a bit embarrassed or silly doing this, so you can never really be sure what the failure rate is for a particular diet; you tend to hear a lot less about the failures!
So what can you do to lose weight and be more healthy?
Look, modern life makes it all to easy to eat the wrong foods in large quantities and to do little or no exercise. I am not suggesting that getting thinner or more healthy will ever be easy, or that there's some quick fix (unlike the claims of some of these diet regimes!). Nor am I saying you shouldn't try to improve your health just because it might be hard, far from it! But I am saying that this is important enough that you need to give yourself the best chance of succeeding by going about things in the right way.
So by all means try and change your eating regime but try and do so gradually rather than making grand changes that fall by the wayside after a week of agonising self-denial. Also try to move to an eating regime that you can stick to for the long-haul - of the popular diet ideas out there, the Mediterranean diet is probably one of the better ones as it's proven to be healthy, you do not have to deny yourself any major food groups, and the modern Western diet already includes a lot of Mediterranean (usually Italian!) food in it so you won't have problems finding something to eat in the supermarket or at a restaurant.
But a word of warning - if you try to be a bit more Mediterranean then don't kid yourself that eating pizza for every meal is going to help you lose weight! You will still have to think about your Calorie intake if you want to lose weight so think about how Calorie-dense your food is - processed foods often have added sugar and fat that ramps up the Calories, so if you want to be properly Mediterranean then start preparing your own meals.
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