A lot of fad diets out there claim to give dieters the needed weight loss in short time. Needless to say, the 3 day diet offers the shortest time possible, 10 pounds off in 3 days. Wow! Now, if only that is true. Still, for those of you interested in this short-term program, let me present the full menu plan.

Day 1 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 1/2 grapefruit or juice
• 1 toast with 1 tbsp peanut butter

Lunch

• 1/2 cup tuna
• 1 toast
• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners

Dinner

• 3 oz. lean meat or chicken
• 1 cup green beans
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 apple
• 1 cup regular vanilla ice cream

Day 2 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 1 egg
• 1/2 banana
• 1 toast

Lunch

• 1 cup cottage cheese or tuna
• 8 regular saltine crackers

Dinner

• 2 beef franks
• 1 cup broccoli or cabbage
• 1/2 cup carrots
• 1/2 banana
• 1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

Day 3 -Breakfast

• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners
• 5 regular saltine crackers
• 1 oz. cheddar cheese
• 1 apple

Lunch

• 1 boiled egg
• 1 toast
• black coffee or tea, with artificial sweeteners

Dinner

• 1 cup tuna
• 1 cup carrots
• 1 cup cauliflower
• 1 cup melon
• 1/2 cup regular vanilla ice cream

The above recommended meal plan entails that the dieter would be restricted to about 600 caloric intake per day, well below the amount needed by the body. The dieter would probably experience dehydration, as water is not part of the diet plan. The weight shed during this period might just be attributed to the body fluid you lost. Carbohydrates, the source of calories, contribute to the necessary function of retaining body fluid. Furthermore, the meal plan is strictly controlled and doesn’t allow variation. This is ideal only for those who don’t easily give in to hunger pangs, which might be the continuous state you’ll be in during the prescribed three days.

Following the days of strict diet, one might be prone to food bingeing to answer the body’s clamor for more food. Needless to say, this would just put those three days of gastronomic torture to waste. Then you would undergo what others would term the “yo-yo” diet. You put back on the weight you needed to lose in the first place, which would spur you to diet again, which would cause you to binge and gain weight again, and thus the cycle goes on and on…

Nobody can really say just how effective the 3 day diet is (or the other fad diets, for that matter). There might be even some out there who would testify to its efficacy. Still, the only way to lose weight safely is to lose it slowly. That way, the body can adjust to the state you want it in and there would be no more physiological impetus for you to eat more than what is needed. When a person binges on food after a period of semi-starvation, it is the body’s way of saying that it needs food urgently to survive.

As the American population gets heavier and heavier in terms of weight, fad diets are formulated and produced almost every day, with the constant promise of losing weight in the shortest time possible. Here are some rundown on varied fad diets introduced and reintroduced in the recent years.

The New Beverly Hills Diet is a food combining diet which advocates eating only specific type of food for a period of days. It was developed by former actress Judy Mazel and she categorizes food into proteins, carbohydrates, and fruit. Although the plan does not limit the amount of food eaten, the dieter is advised to eat only fruits during the first 10 days, slowly adding other food groups thereafter. This diet is particularly dangerous in that it severely limits the type of food eaten. Furthermore, its premise that digestive enzymes come from the food itself and not from the body is scientifically unsound.

The 5 Day Miracle Diet advocated by author Adele Puhn theorizes that a person can regulate his blood sugar and insulin levels through eating specific type of food at specific intervals of the day. She advices on eating low-glycemic food every two hours, since these food takes longer to digest, prevents one from eating sugary treats, and can normalize a person’s blood sugar. The theory still has a long way to go before being accepted as true, and the diet itself still promotes the avoidance of carbohydrates, which goes against the grain in achieving proper nutrition.

The Sugar Buster Diet promotes the principle that sugar is toxic and absolutely bad for the body. The premise behind this principle is the association of insulin, produced in the processing of carbohydrates, with weight gain. This diet promises to keep insulin level low and it advocates staying away from sweets and other high-glycemic food like potatoes and pasta. It has no restrictions on the amount of food eaten and also advises on proper exercise. Though this program has its advantages, it also limits the dieter’s intake of important minerals and vitamins found in the food it shuns.

The Protein Power Diet tells its followers to eat all the meat they want and stay away from carbohydrate-rich food like pasta, potatoes, bread, and some fruits and vegetables. The dieter indeed loose weight, though most of it water weight. Like the Atkins diet, this program relies on ketosis to shed those unwanted pounds. The problem with ketosis is that is causes a lot of side effects like fatigue, nausea and even kidney damage. Also, weight lost through this process is easily gained back following discontinuation of this diet.

Finally, a fad diet worth mentioning would be the one that encourages followers to change the way they breathe as this, the proponents said, can greatly change your metabolism rate. Deep breathing, the premise states, brings in extra oxygen into the body that is used for energy and fuel to burn fat, even more than doing exercise can. Up to this day, the proponents still has to prove that theory into fact, as there is no known association between oxygen and weight loss.

The advent of internet has made information available to virtually anyone who would care to surf it. For a person seeking to lose weight without spending a dime on programs, the internet provides a veritable source of how to’s and suggestions. Here are examples of fad diets one can explore with just a click of a mouse.

The Cabbage Soup Diet

As the name suggest, the main food to be taken by its followers is cabbage soup. Though this diet does not advocate long-term adherence, eating cabbage soup as main part of the meal would somehow be too much for most to stand. Since cabbage is a vegetable notoriously low in calories, this diet is also physiologically dangerous, not to mention gastronomically uninspiring.

The 7-Day Diet

This diet presents a list of food that one should strictly follow and eat for seven days. The problem here is that the different web sites I visited recommended a slight variation of food for a given day, except for the avoidance of bananas on the first day. People who tried this diet reported feeling weak and fatigue, which is understandable since it advocated eating mostly just fruits and vegetables, a poor source of calorie needed for the body to maintain its function.

The Blood Type Diet

This diet was formulated and advocated by Dr. Peter D’Adamo who claims that the most important diet determinant is your blood type. In his program, he outlined the food that should be taken and avoided by people with different blood types. Basically, type O should stick to a diet full of red meat and avoid wheat, type A should go vegetarian with a little fish and chicken, type B is allowed almost all basic food with a few exceptions and type AB should eat a combination of food eaten by type A and B. It’s probably worth mentioning that those in the know had derided D’Adamo’s diet for lack of scientific merit. But hey, it’s a free world, right?

The Grapefruit Diet

This diet has been around since the 1980s and bases its claims on the fat-burning properties of grapefruit. The proponents advocate eating any type of food you want as long as you eat half a grapefruit or drink 8 ounces of its unsweetened juice every meal. A study was even conducted in 2004 at the Scripps Clinic in California to prove that grapefruit really does induce weight loss. However, experts are expressing caution over the type of food eaten with grapefruit as it is important that along with this fruit, you take in a variety of food to achieve balance nutrition.

The South Beach Diet

This diet’s attractive name has made it one of the most popular fad diets in recent years. Formulated by a cardiologist, this program advocates on eating food containing good carbohydrates and fats. It instructs its followers to eliminate insulin resistance through the avoidance of high-glycemic carbohydrates like sugar, candy, grains, and cereals. This diet promises weight loss of up to 13 pounds in the first two weeks. Attractive prospect this may be to those desperately seeking to lose unwanted weight, there is still the big possibility of gaining back those pounds throughout the course of the diet.