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Fad Diets & Their Disadvantages

If you want to lose weight rapidly, going on a fad diet may be tempting. Celebrities seem to go on fad diets all the time and are praised for their weight loss in the media. Drastic calorie restrictions and avoiding entire food groups may seem well worth the effort to get to your desired weight. Fad diets affect your health and overall well-being. Learning about the disadvantages of fad diets may help keep you from resorting to them for weight loss.

  1. Health Risks

    • Drastically restricting calories from your body may result in nutritional deficiencies. If your body's potassium and sodium levels are low, it may affect your heart and ultimately result in a heart attack. Other deficiencies include iron and vitamin B12 deficiencies. Your organs depend on energy from carbohydrates to function. A lack of carbs may result in kidney and liver failure. Fad diets may also trigger eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia nervosa, when trying to keep the weight off.

    Food Restrictions

    • To function at its best, you must provide your body with a wide variety of foods, rich in vitamins and minerals. Fad diets reverse this process. They are very limited in the foods you can eat to achieve the promised weight loss. Often, you may only eat one type of food and are required to avoid entire food groups. This robs your body of nutrients. If you stray from the diet, you risk failure. Boredom sets in and cravings for "forbidden" foods are emphasized.

    Fad Diet Costs

    • Fad diets come and go and one is more expensive than the next. They may require you purchase books, bars, shakes, powders or pills needed to maintain the diet. If you refrain from doing this, you may set yourself up for failure. Atkins and South Beach are just two of the fad diets out there that offer a wide range of products to support your diet.

    Weight Gain

    • When going on a fad diet, don't expect long-term results, as the weight is quickly gained back the moment you start eating normal again. The rapid weight loss you experience on a fad diet is that of water and muscle tissue--not fat. Therefore, once you stop the diet, your body replenishes its water content, making you gain back the weight. Disappointment may set in and, when deciding to lose weight again, you may end up in a yo-yo dieting cycle.

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