With numerous fad diets coming out in recent years, it’s no wonder a lot of people get confused on what to follow. Data had shown that the average American is getting heavier and it’s understandable that most of them would want to shed off those extra baggage. After all, who wouldn’t want to be fit and trim? But following these fad diets blindly is just as dangerous as staying obese. A person considering on joining a fad diet program ought to be armed with sufficient knowledge on proper nutrition so as to aid in the diet selection process. Sadly, most of the fad diets available in the market today do not include the achievement of balanced nutrition in their repertoire.

The American Heart Association (AHA) recently released its guideline for improving diet and lifestyle with the primary goal of reducing the risk for cardiovascular diseases. In a nutshell, it promotes the achievement of your ideal body weight, control of your levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol and triglycerides, normalizing your blood pressure, maintaining a healthy level of blood glucose, being active, and avoidance of smoking. Though the guideline did not specifically mention any fad diets, it recommends the intake a lot of fluids, fruits and vegetables along with high-fiber foods, whole grains and fish at least twice a week. It suggests the reduction of saturated fat intake and eating only lean meats and low-dairy products. Beverages and food with added sugars must also be limited.

The recommendations made by the AHA are certainly sensible but the fad diet industry still has a huge following due to its promise of almost instant gratification with absence of demand for lifestyle changes. The willingness for some to try some of these diets often leads to disappointment, waste of money, and adverse effects on health.

The American Dietetics Association dispels several myths associated with dieting with the release of their own guidelines. Here, the organization rejects the notion that there is a type of food that will make one lose weight, like grapefruit or cabbage. A person still needs variety in his diet to function properly and all these fad diets ever do is lower your caloric intake. The same can be said on diets advocating the increased intake of protein-rich food while reducing all the others. Caution should also be exercised if one is taking fiber supplements as this can lead to dehydration and constipation if one doesn’t drink plenty of fluids. One must also bear in mind that low calorie liquid diet was formulated under strict physician supervision and must only be used under the same condition. Use of these products indiscriminately will cause some unpleasant effects on your health.

So, before you decide on taking on a dietary program, make sure you completely understand its concepts and its proponents really know what they’re talking about. Always include enough exercise in your daily activities, as this is the only proven way to lose weight. Do steer away from fad diets that make overblown and fantastic claims of weight loss as more often than not, it’s just pure air.

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.