When it comes to weight loss, we believe in anything and everything that is trending and also start following it. We believe in crash diets, GM diets, etc blindly as they give us instant results.Sometimes we become so obsessed with weight loss that we don’t think about exercising and fall in prey of crash diets only to ruin our own health.
“With the recent advances in access to various channels of media, falling prey to following any fad/crash diets to lose weight has become an in thing. Nutrition information just keeps floating everywhere,” said Priya Jain, Head
But, we should always remember that we all have a different body type and it is important to read the fine prints, weigh the pros and cons, before following any trend.
“People often concentrate just on the weight loss numbers and totally forget about body’s nutritional status,” said Jain, whose team at Obino calculated the ill-effects of fad diet.
Here are some of the
1. Raw Food Diet – This diet involved chewing all the day and suggested that cooking reduces nutrition levels. Well, it should be noted that cooking also enhances some nutrients available. These set of people continue to get benefitted from the nutrients enhanced with the rawness, and simultaneously keep missing the other set of nutrients available in cooked foods. All in all, it’s neither a sustainable diet nor does it give sustainable weight loss effects.
2. Gluten Free Diet – It is understandable that people who are allergic or sensitive to gluten will avoid it, but what about the rest? “Normal people whose staple has been gluten based for donkey’s years have started following this diet in the hope of losing weight. They land up losing weight since the staple changes completely for them, however the weight loss effects don’t continue for long, unless healthy eating habits are instilled,” said Jain. Consequently, they either hit a plateau or the weight bounces back.
3. Ketogenic Diet – As per Jain, this diet is an effective way of treating epilepsy as a humongous range of evidence based studies are there to back it up. Here, the body uses ketone bodies generated from fat as a source of fuel instead of glucose. This soon transformed into a diet trend. “Recent trend of following a ketogenic diet for weight loss can make people lose weight since there’s a shift in the fuel use in the body; with an addition of various medical problems to their bags like hypoglcemia, hypercholesterolemia, high uric acid levels, kidney stones, etc. Moreover, the preparation of ketogenic diet is an extra item on the to-do list too; since it’s the exact opposite of our usual diet, one cannot eat from the family pot,” said Jain, who rated this diet 1 out of 10.
4. Blood Group Diet – What is your blood group as this diet is based on an understanding that foods you eat react with your blood type and hence specific blood groups are allowed specific food groups only. “However, there’s no evidence that this principle brings about weight loss effects. The only weight loss effect might be seen due to the diet being too restrictive, rather than being healthy,” said Jain.
5. Detox Diet – If you over-indulged in a party the previous night and you are guilty about it, don’t compensate for it by eating only fruits or soup the next day. “Trust me, compensation in such forms could land one up in a soup, since it’s a vicious cycle. Many people complain of acidity, headaches, fatigue with even one day of such diet. If continued for longer durations, can lead to severe nutrient deficiency,” said Jain.
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