What are fad diets?
What fad diets are there?
Which fad diets meet the Australian Dietary Guidelines
How exactly they affect our health (details)
Why do more girls tend to follow the fad diet rather than boys?
What is a healthy body weight for individuals?
What is the most effective way for people to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight?
How safe and effective are they in achieving a long term healthy body weight?
Would a popular fad diet meet the long term nutritional needs of individuals in line with the Australian Dietary Guidelines?
What impact does frequent dieting at a young age have on your health?
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What are fad diets?
Typically a fad diet shares some, or all, of the following characteristics:
• Promises a quick fix
• Promotes ‘magic’ foods or combinations of foods
• Implies that food can change body chemistry
• Excludes or severely restricts food groups or nutrients, such as carbohydrates
• Has rigid rules that focus on weight loss
• Makes claims based on a single study or testimonials only.
These fad diets usually are low in carbs and the only reason they work for a short-time is because of fluid and muscle loss not FAT LOSS. Body fat takes time to lose.
What fad diets are there?
The Grapefruit Diet-is based on the concept that grapefruit juice burns or melts away the fat. People lost weight due to the fact that the diet was low in calories, and not for the reason that Grapefruits contain ‘magical properties that burn your fat’.
The Beverly Hills Diet- also claimed that the fruit was the key to weight loss success. This diet claimed that pawpaw softened fat, pineapple burned it off, and watermelon flushed the fat out of the body. The diet included eating only fruit for the first 10 days, with no protein until day 19. It was dangerous to people’s health.
The Israeli Army Diet-the diet involved eating chicken for 2 days, apples for 2 days, cheese for 2 days and salad for 2 days. This diet was nutritionally deficient and BORING! The reason people often lost weight on this diet was because they couldn’t face eating the same for 2 days straight and so ate very little on the second day.
The Russian Air Force Diet-was simply a very low calorie diet. Breakfast on day 1 consisted of only coffee.
The Cabbage Soup Diet-encouraged people to eat as much of a cabbage based ‘ fat-burning’ soup as they liked and to take a supplement before going to bed on an empty stomach.
And these… are only five of the many hundreds of fad diets out there.
What are the Australian Dietary Guidelines?
These guidelines are for healthy eating, and they provide advice to the general population about healthy food choices.
They are used as an overall counseling on a diet, and are guidelines for change in a person's eating habits.
They give you help on creating a diet which contributes to a healthy lifestyle and is consistent, so that there is a low risk of you developing a diet related disorder.
Which fad diets meet the Australian Dietary Guidelines?
The Australian Dietary Guidelines are for healthy eating, and fad diets are difficult to sustain because they are often very low in kilojoules and have strict rules about how and when to eat certain foods.
As fad diets are like this, they wouldn’t meet the Australian Dietary Guidelines, and so are not suitable healthy diets for losing weight.
The Australian Dietary Guidelines are there to provide a sustainable diet which is healthy, but the fad diets are difficult to sustain and can lead to yo-yo diets.
Yo-yo diets are when you lose weight, but end up regaining it along with more.
Fad diets also tend to result in nutrient deficiencies, and are just a quick fix or a magic solution which isn’t sustainable.
What is a healthy body weight for individuals?
A healthy body weight for individuals would be to have a BMI (body mass index) between 18.5 and 24.9 (for adults).
If you are over the healthy weight range, you may be at a higher risk of developing health problems and becoming overweight or obese.
If you are under the healthy weight range, you have a higher risk of becoming anorexic.
Being over or under the health weight range poses a risk of illness, as your body can't function as well.
Would a popular fad diet meet the long term nutritional needs of individuals in line with the Australian Dietary Guidelines?
No fad diets would meet the Australian Dietary Guidelines, as the diets usually involve cutting out food that your body needs to stay healthy, and are low in kilojoules.
Diets that are inadequate may pose a health threat to those on them, and reviews of diets in popular magazines have found that they rarely meet the recommended nutrient guidelines.
What are the effects of fad diets?
By cutting out key foods, fad diets have been known to cause the following symptoms:
-Dehydration
- Weakness and fatigue
- Nausea and headaches
- Constipation
- Inadequate vitamin and mineral intake
Fad diets that severely restrict food groups or nutrients may also be omitting the protective health effects that a balanced eating plan provides. It is not known whether fad diets are safe over the long term and whether they lead to an increased risk of various possible diseases.
What impact does frequent dieting at a young age (teenagers) have on your health?
Many girls, of any age, worry about their weight, and can start to diet at early ages.
The media promotes unrealistic images of how people should look, and often the thin and perfect looking person on the screen or in the magazine has been edited to look perfect, but using body doubles, airbrushing, and computer graphics techniques.
Researchers have found that girls who eat a diet rich in calcium also consumed other essential nutrients and didn’t show the increased body mass found with girls who didn’t consume enough calcium daily.
It is not appropriate for young teenagers to go on fad diets, because this is the most important stage for them to develop and grow.
What is the most effective way to lose weight safely?
A sensible low fat program, balanced diet and exercise plan will allow you to lose 0.5kg a week.
With a balanced eating plan, it’s what you leave in that makes all the difference. For a balanced eating plan to be successful, you need to:
• Eat plenty of vegetables, legumes and fruits
• Eat plenty of cereals (including breads, rice, pasta and noodles), preferably wholegrain
• Include lean meat, fish, poultry or alternatives
• Include milks, yoghurts, cheeses or alternatives
• Drink plenty of water
• Limit saturated fat and moderate total fat intake
• Choose reduced fat varieties of foods where possible
• Choose foods low in salt
• Limit your alcohol intake if you choose to drink
Consume only moderate amounts of sugars and foods containing added sugars.
Changing your eating and physical activity habits can be difficult at first. But once you’ve started, it’s easy to sustain. Here are a few tips to help ease the transition:
• Combine an active lifestyle with healthy eating.
• Make small, achievable, lifelong changes to your lifestyle and eating habits.
• Fill up on low kilojoule nutritious foods.
• Keep portions moderate in size.
• Eat until you have had enough - not until you are full.
• Do your best to avoid eating when you are not hungry.
• Recognise that on some days you might be hungrier than on other days.
• Eat slowly and enjoy your food.
• Eat regular meals including breakfast, lunch and dinner.
• Reduce the amount of ‘extra’ or ‘sometimes’ foods you eat.
Examples of ‘sometimes’ foods include biscuits, cakes, desserts, pastries, soft drinks and high fat snack items such as crisps, pies, pasties, sausage rolls, other takeaway foods, lollies and chocolate.
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