Ditch the Diet Trend Rollercoaster and Loose That Weight for Good

By Edward Castro
Learning & Life Columnist

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As much as 30% of all adults in the United States are clinically obese. This statistic is even more shocking when you consider the fact that Americans spend $42 billion on diet books and products every year.

Atkins, South Beach, and the Cabbage Soup Diet are just some of the trendy solutions people try in order to lose weight. Some work, some don't, but do any deliver permanent weight loss? Let's explore a few of the more popular diet fads, how they work, and why they don't, as well as solutions that are more likely to produce long term weight management.

Carbs Be Gone

Cutting carbohydrates is among the most popular diet trends currently making the rounds in American households. Two of the most popular are the Atkins and South Beach diets.

Atkins: Where's the Beef?

No longer called the Atkins diet, the Atkins Nutritional Approach is supposed to be a life-long approach to eating. The core message is that carbohydrates are responsible for weight gain. Carbohydrates include sugars, starches, and celluloses. They also include complex carbohydrates such as whole grains that help serve as the major energy source for our bodies.

With the Atkins Nutritional Approach, cutting carbohydrates results in weight loss. More specifically, you're turning into a fat-burning machine instead of a carbohydrate-burning machine.

South Beach: The Good, The Fat, and the Ugly

Like the Atkins Nutritional Approach, the South Beach diet focuses on "fats" to maintain a healthy diet. The difference is that the South Beach diet emphasizes "good" fats, such as Mediterranean oils, olive oil, canola oil, the omega-3 fish oils and the oils found in almost all nuts, over saturated fats. Another difference is that the South Beach diet doesn't rely entirely on counting carbs. The cake and donuts are still off limits, but it's not a cardinal sin to have some brown rice or a nice piece of fruit every now and then.

Let Them Eat Cabbage

The Cabbage Soup diet is among the most extreme dietary options people try. With this diet you can eat as much cabbage soup as you want. The idea is that this diet has negligible calories so you don't gain any weight. It is mostly a short-term diet, usually for seven days, which can result in weight loss, but not permanent weight loss. Most of the loss is water, not fat. You also run the risk of malnutrition if soup is all you eat.

Fighting Weight

Diets such as Atkins, South Beach, and the Cabbage Soup diet work simply because you cut caloric intake, not because there is anything special about the diets themselves. The problem with these diets is not that they limit carbs, but they limit some of the tastiest foods from our normal diets. Also the monotony of these diets makes it much harder to stick with them. As long-term solutions, they leave a lot to be desired.

Worth the Weight?

Preliminary data from the Controlled Carbohydrate Assessment Registry Bank Study indicates that the low-carb diets usually consist of an intake of 1,800 calories a day, with 21% of calories coming from carbohydrates, 56% from fat and 23% from protein. By comparison, the Institute of Medicine has recommended that the best diet for health is one that gets 45% to 65% of calories from carbohydrates, 20% to 35% from fat and 10% to 35% from protein.

Adding It All Up

When you come right down to it, weight loss is really all about math. If you take in less calories than you eat, the more likely you'll lose weight permanently. The best way to lose weight and keep it off is to simply make gradual and permanent adjustments to your diet. Along with changing what and how you eat, you also need to add more active pursuits to your lifestyle. Of course, this solution requires a good deal of work, which is why fad diets are so popular. Fad diets offer quick solutions to long-term problems. By taking a more rational approach to weight loss, you'll find you can lose weight and keep it off permanently.

Sources:

epi.aecom.yu.edu/ccarbs

About the Author
Edward Castro is a freelance writer specializing in new technology, entertainment, and the World Wide Web. He currently assists entrepreneurs in using the Web.

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