It’s that time of the year again. The holidays are over and we are left wondering how all of our clothes “shrunk in the wash.” Yes, it was worth having seconds of that apple kugel and the desserts were amazing. Hey, it’s not our fault that there is so much good food on the holidays! At the same time, no one likes the subsequent weight gain that the holidays bring. So, the mass dieting begins.
Unfortunately, in this age of instantaneous gratification, there are so many misleading advertisements, schemes and products on how to lose the most weight in the shortest time. These claims that diet companies and magazines make are so tempting; it’s hard not to want to try them. Everyone wants the simple fix, but the reality is that there is no quick fix. Fad diets can be extremely dangerous and often prove to be ineffective for weight maintenance in the long run.
Fad diets often promise dramatic results. These diets typically don’t result in long-term weight loss and they are usually unhealthy. In fact, some of these diets can actually be dangerous to your health. Any weight-reduction diet that eliminates one or more of the essential food groups, or recommends consumption of one type of food in excess at the expense of other foods, cannot be a healthy plan. Fad diets rarely follow sound nutritional principles for weight loss, which usually focus on ingesting fewer calories and/or exerting more energy through exercise. In addition, medical professionals and the institutions generally do not endorse fad diets.
Many of these diets help you lose weight quickly, but there are many dangerous side effects that they can have on our bodies. For example, the majority of the weight you drop when you lose weight too quickly tends to be water weight. This can lead to rapid dehydration. Our bodies need water desperately so dehydration can put our bodies in distress.
A lot of fad- dieters also tend to suffer from lack of energy. Fad diets involve depriving yourself of calories. However, calories are what translate into the energy your body needs to get through the day. If you fast, or eat significantly less than what your body requires in order to lose weight quickly, you’ll find yourself feeling fatigued very often. Losing weight too quickly can also lead to severe diarrhea, followed by constipation. If this persists over time it can lead to intense dehydration—a condition that can be life threatening.
Crash diets and fasting are dangerous because they restrict you from consuming fats and carbs, but they’re also unsafe since they prevent your body from getting the vitamins and minerals it needs. If you restrict your body from its normal caloric intake over a long period of time, your body will be deprived of its essential nutrients and you can become severely malnourished.
Permanent weight loss is not something that a “quick-fix” diet can achieve. Instead, think about weight loss as a permanent lifestyle change—a commitment to replace high-calorie foods with healthier, lower-calorie alternatives. A commitment to reduce your portion sizes. And especially a commitment to become more active.
“I don’t ever advocate dieting. Diets don’t work and the only way to ‘lose weight’ is to get healthy and make a lifestyle change,” said Dr. Angela DeBord Henriksen, a family medicine physician at Indiana University Health. Losing weight in a healthy, sustainable way takes time. It requires patience and commitment. Extreme diets may promise rapid results but they’re more likely to leave you feeling cranky and starving. And to make it even worse, eventually you will gain back more weight. We have to think of lifestyle change rather than dieting, by replacing high calorie foods with healthy alternatives, limiting portion size, making better choices, and remaining active.
So it’s OK to have the kugel for the holidays, but try a vegetable kugel instead of noodle, have a portion of brisket the size of your fist, maybe some quinoa with sautéed mushrooms, and some fresh fruit with just a spoonful of dessert. Not bad, right?