“I know what your New Year’s resolution is going to be for 2020.”
A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that almost half of Americans tried to lose weight within the past year. That is up from the 43 percent when people were last surveyed between 2007 and 2008.
Diet Wars are Raging
The advice from some of the most popular dietary approaches, like intermittent fasting, the Ketogenic diet, or mindful eating; appears the Diet Wars are raging!
With hundreds of bikini clad “Instagram Stars” promoting everything from the raw tea diet to the hamburger diet, hundreds more posing as fitness gurus promoting some snake-oil diet plan have surfaced. Big-name celebrities and celebrity doctors selling dangerous diets and diets pills that lead to addition and cancers, have taken the lead. The consumer is flooded with hundreds of television commercials selling meal plans that promise to help you lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Then, instead of committing to one plan, in desperation to get the “Best Body Ever,” the despairing try every plan for a day or two. Sometime blending two or three different diet plans into one–Keto-lite. It has become a circus like atmosphere with all the competing diet plans. Here are some of the leading fad diet programs on the market today:
Whole30
Our Takeaway: Restrictive Diets Don’t Work!
The Whole30 program focuses on eating real food, which is solid advice. Specifically, it calls for piling your plate with veggies, lean proteins, natural fats, some fruits and lots of herbs and spices. Here’s why it works: A trip down the manufacturing process makes ultra-processed foods digestible so your body doesn’t have to work as hard to break them down and take what it needs.
We found this diet plan restrictive since it eliminates staples like legumes, whole grains and staples like potatoes. Natural food burns more energy. Some foods are experts at performing certain functions and other foods when compounded with another, become powerful super foods, but when isolated, are basically worthless.
Paleo Diet
Our Takeaway: Our prehistoric ancestors lived off the land.
What’s surprising about this diet is that it has a cult following. The Paleo Diet is designed to mimic the way our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived by eating off the land. The problem with the Paleo Diet is that it promotes a farm-to-table vegetarian diet; at least, that’s how it got its start but have blended into whatever concoction needed to stay relevant.
A high fiber diet is not a bad idea, but it’s not the “solution” it promises to be for more than one reason. One important reason being the body needs more than fiber. Fiber is one part of maintaining a healthy body we should be all be striving for. Promoting the idea that being thin is healthy is as productive as promoting sun tanning! Ninety percent of the digestive process occurs in the gut. The remaining occurs in the liver. That small percent of digestion that occurs in the liver greatly impacts weight gain, weight loss and digestion. That ninety percent that occurs in the gut affects the entire metabolic system that give circulation to the entire body.
WW (Weight Watchers)
Our Takeaway: Meditation to Lose Weight Is Not For Everyone!
In case you haven’t heard, Weight Watchers has re-branded its name and its philosophy. WW, as it’s now known, stress wellness that comes with a new emphasis on the dieter’s mindset via a partnership with the meditation app, HeadSpace. WW (formerly known Weight Watchers) want you to believe that their app, downloaded after sale, can cause you to relax which helps promote healthy weight loss.
Like I said before, okay… I guess?
Re branding a weight loss program to a sleep therapy program is interesting. Some people may like listening to soft music as they try to take their minds away from their daily stresses. Don’t get me wrong, I love meditation but it’s not for everyone. Counting calories is not for everyone. The good thing about losing weight and staying healthy is, a healthy body is for everyone and WW is not. Meditation can put you in control of bad habits but it requires a lot of discipline. Most diets fail because they demand restrictions that most people can’t abide by. The average person can listen to encouraging words and the soft sound of music but the majority will need a lot more than that to be successful losing weight.
Ketogenic Diet
Our Takeaway: Atkins on Steroids
Fad diets often come with big promises of weight loss and best health, but at what risks? University of Chicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial, say the Ketogenic or Keto Diet, which has gained popularity in the last several years, is extremely strict and difficult to keep. The Keto diet is primarily used to manage seizures in children with epilepsy. Research on the diet’s effectiveness in treating obesity or diabetes is limited.
Ketosis is a metabolic adaptation to allow the body to survive on fat during a period of famine. The assumption is that your body will break down fat and use as fuel to burns as energy, instead of sugar or glucose from carbohydrates.
To achieve Ketosis, the diet requires you eat 75 percent of your intake of calories from fat per day. Compared to 20-35 percent recommended. It also requires 5 percent of your diet’s calories come from carbohydrates, about 20-50 grams per day, and 15 percent of calories from protein. On average, it takes about 72 hours for Ketosis to kick in. “The Keto diet is an “all or nothing diet.”
People following the Keto diet should be eating foods like fatty fish, eggs, dairy, meat, butter, oils, nuts, seeds and low-carb vegetables. “Fat bombs” like unsweetened chocolate or coconut oil can help people reach their goals for fat intake. Keto-compliant foods like red meats and nuts can be costly. Keto-branded products like Keto Coffee and other supplemental products are also both costly and unnecessary.
Wellness Dietitian Mary Condon, RN, LDN, said the Keto diet may result in weight loss and lower blood sugars, but it’s a quick fix. “More often than not, it’s not sustainable. Oftentimes weight gain comes back, and you’ll gain more than what you lost,” Condon said. Lastly, it may take up to 10 years to see the long-term effects of eating a high fat diet. One thing for certain is that high fat diets may cause heart disease and diabetes.
Mediterranean Diet
Our Takeaway: Healthy Fat is Good
This is one diet that I can agree with, fat can be good for diet and weight loss success. For decades, fats were vilified as the leading cause of every disease that afflicts the body and fat fell into the danger zone. If food the labeling contained the words “Fat Free,” it became an instant hit! The Mediterranean Diet promotes eating more healthful fats from foods like olive oil, avocados and nuts. What was highly helpful about the Mediterranean diet is that the evidence showed that eating healthy fats promoted weight loss and protected the heart.
In one five-year study among more than 7,000 middle-aged adults who were instructed to include more fat from either nuts or olive oil, or to consume a low-fat diet, those who enjoyed the higher-fat diet reduced their body weight more than those eating low-fat foods. And while all the middle-aged participants gained some belly fat along the way even while shedding pounds, those whose menus were rich in olive oil or nuts gained less weight around their midsections. What’s interesting is that the participants weren’t instructed to count calories or lose weight or use a tracking device.
It might be that these healthful fats give you a metabolic edge, as one study suggests, or it could be that nuts, avocados and high quality oils may be beneficial to the body in some ways that may not have been studied. Plus, antioxidant-rich foods may lower the inflammatory response that’s thought to enlarge fat cells and raise the risk of health conditions, including Type2 diabetes, memory problems and cancer. Eat your vegetables is not only wise words from a loving mother, but sound medical advice.
Intermittent Fasting
Our Takeaway: Damages the Entire Metabolic Process Long Term
Pundits argue intermittent fasting has benefits but actually, fasting is the same process in every weight loss program. You must reduce your caloric intake to lose and support healthy weight. Fasting, whether intermittent or prolonged, is a reduction in calories. What the promoters of fad diet trends don’t tell you is that once you stop intermittent or prolonged fasting and return to your “normal” eating habits, you will regain all the weight you lost and possibly extra pounds. It happens all the time. Another thing that isn’t said by those promoting intermittent fasting or prolonged fasting, is that it damages the body’s ability to burn calories and slow the body’s ability to process food.
Mindful Eating
Our Takeaway: Eat Smaller Portions
I’m probably the most vocal critic of fad diets, restrictive eating, diet plans and any other attempts to convince you to join the “eat this, not that” crowd. I’m the first to tell those wanting to lose weight to look at your family history first. If Nana, Grandpa, Dad, or even uncles and aunties’ body types are large framed, no amount of dieting, starving or surgery is going to trump genetics. Genetics are not included in weight loss programs. Millions of years of evolution cannot be changed because you want to look thin. An easy buzz kill is to say to people wanting to have a certain body image is that your genes are the reason you are the way you look and nothing will change that. I have had the pleasure of saying to obese people that you are what you are, now make that work for you!
Unfortunately for most people, that’s not what they want to hear. They will spend every penny they have to get that “look.” Doctors and diet gurus are happy to take your money but at the end of the day, the thing that has changed is the amount of money you have. Dieting is dangerous. Yes, you may lose weight in the short term but damage your entire metabolic system in the long term. The best way to lose weight and to keep it off is to be mindful about what you’re eating, add fruits and vegetables, incorporate grain into your meal each day and if you can’t add these foods to your meals each day, set a goal for three times a week.
Foodology
Our Take Away: Eating a Natural, Well-balanced Diet is Far More Effective than Fad Dieting
The first thing you will notice about Foodology is that we do not recommend you go on a diet. More important is to put that out there before we go any further. We believe diets are dangerous! The problem with dieting is that you are encouraged to try some new eating habit that is not sustainable. You must either “Eat this, not that” or you must eat too much of one food group and not enough of the other. At Foodology, we stress the importance of eating a complete meal at every opportunity to give the body essential minerals and nutrients to power the body the way meant.
The consequence of dieting is not the weight you lose but the long term effects of losing weight in such a restrictive way which impacts your health long term. Right now, Keto is all the rage but because Keto is a high fat diet, we’re beginning to see a “modified” Keto. This sounds more like the Mediterranean Diet than a Keto Diet. To be successful at maintaining the best weight, you should eat a variety of food.
To be successful at losing and maintaining a healthy eating plan for weight loss, eat less of the foods you love. In all our years of promoting Foodology LLC, we have come across all types of fad diets and foolish meal plans promoted by “quick buck” artists and outright charlatans. The pandemic that has taking this nation by storm can be traced to; processed food, sugar, and oversized portions. In our lesson on Diet Wars, we lay out the facts in a clear and understandable video lessons. You will become empowered to take on the challenge of losing weight and keeping it off by eating your way to your weight loss goals. We lay out for you three foods to add to your meal plan each day or three times a week that will guarantee successful weight loss. We also recommend three fruits that will replace the process sugars that you crave and recommend three vegetables that are super foods that heal and restore the body to a healthy state regardless of your age or medical condition.
No other diet program does this.
Take our powerful lessons and learn to eat healthy and maintain a healthy weight without dieting and starving yourself into another weight loss failure. Invite us to your next Wellness event or let us lead your next weight loss program. Our lessons produce powerful results! Follow us on Face Book, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. Contact us at gethealthy@foodologyllc.com. Wellness Begins With Food!
