Giveaways that a diet is indeed a FAD diet:
- It promises too much weight loss too soon.
- It completely eliminates complete food groups for significant lengths of times.
- It acts as a laxative.
- It substitutes non-foods for foods
- It recommends too little fat, or carbohydrate or protein.
- It
offers you tricks you can use to counteract feelings of hunger you
might experience when you follow the diet. There is no reason to endure
hunger in order to cut calories and lose weight.
Some fad diet examples:
A big part of losing weight through cleansing diets
is through their laxative effect. They make you go to the bathroom
more. This is not a lasting form of weight loss. You lose nutrients,
and when you’ve finally decided you’ve had enough of this diet, you’ll
want to overeat to make up for the deprivation you have caused
yourself.
One diet that uses "substitutes" for standard fare: The "Hollywood Cookie Diet."
You do lose weight because the calories are restricted. This approach
also works with regular food. No matter how many nutrients they put
into cookies, those nutrients aren’t as effective as when they come
from foods in which nature originally put them. No cookies provide
adequate nutrients, no matter how ‘enhanced’ they are.
Submitted by Sherri Meyer, MS, RD
Adapted from Keri Glassman, RD
The Early Show appearance
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