How to Spot Fad Diets

By Catherine Saxelby

Dietitian and nutritionist Catherine Saxelby offers useful tips to help spot and avoid fad diets.


Why fad diets appeal

Fad diets come and go - every year sees the appearance of yet a "new and revolutionary" way of getting rid of unwanted flab. Cast your memory back to the Soup Diet, Dr Atkins' Diet and the Blood Type Diet. Before them, can you recall the Israeli Army Diet, the Beverly Hills Diet, the Hip and Thigh Diet?

The promise of quick weight loss has enormous attraction for anyone with a weight problem. Consider why:

  • it has only to be endured for a few days
  • there is no choice of food, so no decisions have to be made about what you should eat
  • you can return to your former (fattening) way of eating once the diet is over.
Back to Top


Why avoid them?

There are 3 main reasons why you should steer clear of a fad diet:
  1. Fad diets are usually ineffective. That's because they give short-term results but fail to establish sensible eating habits that allow you to eat "real food" as part of a normal life.
  2. Fad diets often cause loss of lean muscle, resulting in a drop in metabolic rate and in turn a decrease in the number of kilojoules (calories) required each day. Therefore the dieter must eat less and less to maintain weight loss, and often "yo-yos" rapidly back to a pre-diet weight once the diet has ceased.
  3. They can cost you! Many weight loss organisations reap a small fortune each year through the sales of diet drinks, meal replacements, appetite suppressants or 'fat blockers', diet books and home-delivered meals.
Back to Top


How to spot a fad from a sensible diet

If you hear about a new diet, look over it and ask yourself the following six questions. Does the diet:

  • make enticing claims about losing weight quickly and effortlessly?
  • allow you to eat as much as you like of any one food - and not put on weight?
  • make one food appear important, giving it "miracle" properties?
  • require you to buy special diet supplements, pills or formula?
  • claim to be new or revolutionary?
  • only mention food and say nothing about exercise?

If the answer to any of these questions is YES, then this is not a balanced program. Forget it!

Back to Top