We’ve talked about a lot of fad diets over the past couple years, so now it’s time to review what lessons we can glean from them and give you a handy spotter’s guide so you can spot the next fad diet when you see it.
Celebrity Endorsement
One of the surest sign that you’re looking at a fad diet—or a wannabe fad diet, one that tries to become all the rage, but just doesn’t have what it takes—is a celebrity endorsement. We’re not necessarily talking about a formal endorsement such as we sometimes see with legitimate weight loss programs and fad diets alike. Most of the time, it’s just an aside in an interview with a magazine surrounding the release of a movie, such as when Beyoncé endorsed the lemonade diet or Katy Perry saying she follows the M Plan.
Implausible Weight Loss Claims
Eat what you want. Lose 50 pounds without exercise. Easy-to-follow secrets to burn 10 pounds this week! You know what these claims are like. Unless you’re working hard, making huge sacrifices, and probably working with a doctor, personal trainer, or other assistance, you’re unlikely to consistently lose more than a pound a week and be healthy. If you want to lose more than that, you’ll be better off getting assistance.
You’ve Never Heard of It before and Suddenly It’s Everywhere You Turn
Fads, by their very nature, rise quickly in popularity. A fad diet will suddenly appear over your cultural horizon and have a lot of adopters among people who are eager to have a healthy lifestyle. You’ll see it on the talk shows that are always looking for material to fill their hours (and often get paid to promote the diets).
Everybody Was Talking about It Last Week and This Week They’re Not
The other thing that’s true about fads is that they die just as quickly as they appear. If a fad diet sounds good or interesting to you, don’t try it right away. Wait a few months and see how many people are still doing it. Chances are, not only has everybody stopped doing it, they either never lost weight with it or they’ve gained back all the weight they lost.
It Sounds So Simple You Wonder Why People Haven’t Been Doing It before
One common claim in fad diets is how simple and effective they are. People are always trying to lose weight. Trust us, if there were an easy and effective way to do it consistently, it wouldn’t just be one or a few celebrities endorsing it, but every woman in Hollywood, every man in New York, every Tom, Dick, and Harry in Cleveland who would be using it within a year or two.
Common Ingredient Whose Magic Weight Loss Properties Have Just Been Discovered
Another key way to identify fad diets is their emphasis on a single ingredient that is often a very common food, like the raspberry ketone diet, the chocolate diet, the cabbage diet, the juicing diet. Again, although science may progress slow and steady with its examinations, there are millions of people constantly trying everything they can think of to lose weight. If any of these common ingredients really led to remarkable weight loss, everyone would be doing it.
Rare Ingredient Whose Magic Weight Loss Powers Have Just Been Discovered
The other strategy that fad diet promoters use is to advertise that some strange, exotic, or newly-discovered ingredient. Some of these ingredients include the amino acid diet formula, acai berries diet, and many more. You see these all the time in banner advertising on web sites. It’s pretty much guaranteed that these don’t work.
If you want to stop your fad diet rollercoaster and find a weight loss solution that really works, we can help. Please contact Medfit Medical Weight Loss today.
