A fad diet is a fashionable diet plan that promises to help you lose weight more often than not in a relatively short time. A fad diet frequently attracts a lot of media coverage, which then attracts a large number of overweight people to try it in order to get back in shape. Fad diets are often soon discredited, but they keep raising their head from time to time.

The grapefruit diet was or is an example of a fad diet. People wanted to accept as true that you could lose weight just by eating. The food in this instance was grapefruits, but there is also a cabbage diet. The trouble with these fad diets is that their slimming effect is only temporary, because you cannot eat no more than cabbage or grapefruit for the rest of your life, so the weight comes back as soon as you go back to normal.

‘If you always do what you always done, you will always get what you always got’ is a true saying. But what is worse is that a lot of of these diets can be harmful to your health.

However, do not think that fad diets are a new phenomenon. Fad diets or fad medicines have an ancient history going back to fake witch doctors, medicine men and quack doctors who doubled as barbers! Fad practitioners have a long and scandalous history and they are still alive and doing very well, thank you very much, today.

These days, medicine is too strictly regulated for them, so they have turned their attention to gullible, despondent dieters. Most of those that take up a fad diet are overweight teens longing to look like their favourite film idol.

Fad diets more often than not concentrate on reducing or completely cutting out carbohydrates. It is the low intake of carbohydrates that brings about the fast loss of weight. In fact, this quick loss is due to the quick loss of water that these low-carb diets stimulate. Much of the fat might still be there, so that when you stop the diet, your body re-absorbs its normal amount of water and the lost weight is put back on just as fast as it was lost.

In the normal course of events, carbohydrates are the source of energy for work and exercise, but with these fad diets, the carbs are no longer there, so the body begins to break down its store of fat. This may appear advantageous but it is not necessarily so. The ketones resulting from the breakdown of fat are excreted via urine and often increased volumes of urine, which can result in dehydration. People with certain medical conditions have to be very careful too; diabetics, for example.

Fad diets are popular, but they can be very detrimental to your body and when they do not have the desired result in the long-term, it can be very depressing leading to comfort eating. This is why many people begin a fad diet, lose weight and are radiant for a month or two, but then slip back when they are approaching their ideal weight. They go back to their old ways and the weight begins to come back. They become depressed, certain that they will never be able to lose weight; they comfort eat some more, maybe giving up any hope of regaining a normal weight permanently.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece, writes on many subjects, but is currently involved with lose weight fast and safe. If you have an interest in losing weight, too, please go over to our website now at Why Can’t I Lose Weight?