I know of a guy who did ‘The Atkins Diet’ back in the early 2000s. He cut his carbohydrate intake to nearly nothing, ate a lot of protein and dietary fat-laden food, and pumped iron a few days each week.
How did he fare?
He lost body weight rather quickly, gained a little bit of muscle, and managed to drive his cholesterol levels up too high.
How’s he doing now?
He fell off the wagon of that scourge of ‘the fad diets’ a few years ago, gained back all his body fat plus an additional twenty pounds, and has muscles that have atrophied enough to appear like they’d never enjoyed the tiny bit of development they once had.
“The fad diets” – what is it with these things? ‘The South Beach Diet’, ‘The Zone Diet’, ‘The Hampton Diet’, and ‘The Atkins Diet’ – just to name a handful. Why did so many people fall prey to the hype associated with these eating plans and then gain back fat with a vengeance after following and then dumping them?
Can 'the fad diets' keep you in shape after helping you lose unwanted weight? That depends much on your thinking - much of it subconscious
Let’s start with a theory on how ‘the fad diets’ became such fads. The one thing all these eating plans have in common is that they prescribe cutting carbohydrates in various amounts – each one having its own respective pattern for doing so. The Atkins diet requires a drastic cut in carbs until the desired weight is lost. The South Beach Diet directs its adherents to cut carbs drastically for two weeks – followed by a gradual reintroduction of them until weight stabilizes. The Zone Diet has weight loss enthusiasts keeping their carbohydrates at no more than 40% against the other two macronutrients – with protein and dietary fat each being at 30%. The Hampton diet primarily emphasizes shifting from refined carbohydrates to complex and fibrous carbohydrates.
That’s all well and good.
Yet what most adherents of these eating plans who are susceptible to the hype associated with them are unaware of is the water weight drop that’s inherent in their prescriptions. There are 2.7 grams of water attached to every gram of carbohydrate we ingest. That’s a lot. It means that when we drop our carbohydrate intake significantly – we immediately experience a drop in our body weight due to some water loss. This initial drop in body weight typically gives the dieter his or her much needed assurance that the fad diet is “working” within the first week or two of its inception. That’s good for word-of-mouth marketing for “the fad diets.”
With this commonality among the fad diets in mind, the question becomes whether there’s anything special or overtly effective about any one of them over the long term. Since the basic formula for fat loss is:
Consume fewer calories than you burn each day
Or
Burn more calories than you consume each day
… one has to wonder if there’s anything but a regimented guideline packaged as a “special formula” that gives each these eating plans their ‘fad’ status.
What’s needed for most people, in my opinion, is a gradual change in habits and self-image over a longer period than ‘the fad diets’ provide. This change of habits should include an effective muscle building program – not some haphazard and generic routine of tossing some weight around in the gym each week. Effective muscle building not only improves metabolism and fat-burning capacity – it makes the whole fitness endeavor more rewarding, exciting, and motivating.
The positive side of the fad diets (aside from The Atkins Diet) is that they could help one develop better eating habits. They can help steer a person away from processed and starchy carbohydrates and toward the type that are more fibrous and complex. That’s good.
The negative side of the fad diets is that they can lead a dieter to an over-zealous state after seeing so much (water) weight drop off within two short weeks. This enthusiasm often leads the person to cut too many calories way too quickly, leading to a snap-back effect.
After the initial “snap-back”, the subconscious mind easily finds its old patterns and directs behavior to follow these cognitive and physiological grooves. That’s what apparently happened in the case of that acquaintance of mine who did The Atkins Diet.
That’s a shame – he could have done it all a lot differently and successfully.
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