Fad diets have always been a thing, but the age of the internet has taken them to a whole new level.
They’re so easy to get sucked into.
Heck, it seems like we all know at least one person who is knee-deep in a 4-week banana cleanse or spending their hard earned wages on whatever dumbfuckery Gwyneth Paltrow is peddling nowadays, so in this article I’m going to bash through all the nonsense and show you why fad diets do not work.
A Broken Nutrition Model
Let’s be clear: the human body is the most sophisticated machine any of us will ever operate.
It’s more advanced than the latest iPhone, or the highest-spec PC, so the very notion that we can “trick it” into so-called “fat loss mode” is absurd.
Yet that’s the shaky foundation upon which every fad diet is built!
These so-called “experts” will tell you that all of your problems can be pinpointed back to one individual thing; whether it be white bread, sugar, gluten, fat, or whatever else they’ve plucked out of thin air. Then they’ll spin you some bullshit about how their magical system will “trick your body into fat burning mode” for three easy payments of £999.99!
Why?
Because teaching people about personal accountability and proper nutritional strategies is too much of a ball-ache for these charlatans, and there’s a lot of money to be made from promising overnight solutions to complex problems.
Their “systems” always involve reducing your daily calorie intake to obscenely low levels, cutting out entire food groups (e.g. no carbohydrates), or eating only one type of food (e.g. the cabbage soup diet).
The Problems This Creates
Building your diet on wobbly foundations always leads to failure.
Let’s look at why.
- Barely anybody can stick to it
Every fad diet is based around the concept of making drastic reductions to your daily calorie intake.
This is done in a variety of different ways and they all suck, so trust me, it’s not your fault when you “hit the wall” and feel angrier than a vegan who just bit their tongue!
The boffins who created the fad diet will then come down hard on you and claim that “you don’t want results badly enough!”, but after 22 years as a personal trainer I can tell you that even the most determined of athletes/trainees would struggle to last very long on 500-600 calories per day, so don’t beat yourself up about it.
Eating this way inevitably leads to burnout, and the body responds by ramping up production of ghrelin (the hunger hormone) and reducing production of leptin (the fullness hormone), which causes the mother of all binges where we eat the whole house and everybody in it! (7, 8)
NOTE: For many people this then leads to them beating themselves up about “falling off track”, and then re-starting the fad diet come Monday, and so on. I have family memebrs who have been stuck in this endless loop for years, always searching for a quick fix and never achieving the results they wanted. It’s really not worth the hassle!
- These diets build an unhealthy relationship with food
Your relationship with food is the key to unocking long-term results.
Make no mistake, being brainwashed by poor science into believing that certain food groups are responsible for making us fat (which we know is not true), or putting foods onto lists of “good” and “bad”, is the first step to an eating disorder. (1, 2, 3)
In order to make lasting changes to our body we must create a healthier relationship with food, one which allows us to eat anything we want within moderation without guilt and without fear. That process begins by realizing there’s no fucking Bogeyman! Weight loss and weight gain are governed by your overall calorie intake, not individual foods or particular macronutrients. (4, 5)
- Water weight loss is not fat loss (and it’s temporary AF)
One of the reasons these diets often tell you to reduce carbohydrates is because this triggers a response from the body which causes us to flush water from our muscle cells.
This creates the illusion of weight loss, essentially “tricking you” into thinking that the magic diet plan is working, but all that’s happening is you’re flushing a bunch of water from your system.
It’s incredibly frustrating when this process is over (10-20 days) because weight loss suddenly stops dead in its tracks and the “experts” don’t offer an explanation why. Worse still, you’ll re-gain all of this water weight when you re-introduce carbohydrates further down the line and beat yourself up for being “back at square one.” (6)
- Avoiding certain macronutrients can create nutritional deficiencies
During the 1800s, sailors would catch nasty diseases like scurvy as a result of their overly restrictive diet (fish and rice for months at a time).
Fad diet plans have a similar effect, because by encouraging us to cut out entire food groups they leave gaps in our nutrition plan which can cause us to miss out on several key nutrients. (9)
For example, remember in the early 2000s when people had stinky breath from doing Atkins? This is why. Oh, and that friend from work who looks like an extra from The Walking Dead? You can blame their 4-week raw goat milk cleans for that.
Why Are They So Popular?
I’ve got Dr. Layne Norton, PhD, to answer this one:
“There are two reasons for the continued popularity of fad diets.
1) It’s the same reason people buy into financial scams; people want a quick fix, and most salesmen are good enough to capitalize on that. We’ve known about the stuff that really works for many years, it’s just not sexy enough.
2) Humans don’t like personal accountability, and that makes them easy targets for this type of stuff. If you listen to the creators of these type of diets you’ll notice that most of their schtick is about nothing is your fault, you’ve been mislead, and they’ve found a simple solution. All of that sounds very appealing to someone who doesn’t want to be held accountable.”
– Dr. Layne Norton, PhD
A List Of Fad Diets To Avoid
I want you to avoid all fad diets, of course, but certain ones suck harder than others.
Every time January swings around on the calendar I see the same bullshit trending across social media and in the newspapers, and these things can become incredibly popular overnight with a good marketing campaign, or a cleverly-used celebrity endorsement, or even just a cool name.
So here’s a list of the fad diets I consider to be the worst offenders.
- The Dukan Diet
This diet from Dr Pierre Dukan gained popularity in the 1970s when it was regularly mentioned in celebrity magazines.
It’s a low carb diet which is split into four phases.
During phase one you are instructed to eat only protein. In phase two you’ll eat protein and vegetables. Phase three is for protein, vegetables, and starches, and phase four states that you can eat whatever you want (?!), providing you set aside one day per week as a protein-only day. Oh, and that you “take the stairs whenever possible, darling.”
Why The Dukan Diet doesn’t work:
1. You’ll eat from a very restrictive list of foods during the early stages.
2. It cuts out entire food groups, causing you to miss out on key micronutrients.
3. The majority of weight loss is just water due to zero/low carbohydrates.
4. The motherfucker who created this doesn’t even give you a calorie target. Seriously. Telling people that “you can eat whatever you want, as long as you promise to always take the stairs!” is horrendous advice, because there aren’t enough stairs in the world to match the amount of pizza I would eat, you fool!
- The HCG Diet
If you thought that was crazy, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!
The HCG Diet tells people to eat 500-800 calories per day, and if you accidentally go over your targets you’re instructed to eat just 6 apples the following day “to make up for your mistake” (you cheating bastard).
Oh, and then there’s the small matter of injecting yourself with the HCG (the pregnancy hormone!) because they believe this will speed up the fat burning process – which it absolutely will not!
When it comes to food choices, once again we are encouraged to go very low in carbs.
Why The HCG Diet doesn’t work:
1. You’ll be eating from a very restrictive list of foods.
2. Your daily calorie target is absurdly low.
3. It cuts out entire food groups causing you to miss out on key micronutrients.
4. The majority of weight lost is just water due to zero/low carbohydrates.
5. HCG injections are fucking dangerous, and are known to cause headaches, constipation, and blood clots. Ironically, one thing they’ve NEVER been shown to do is help with weight loss! (10, 11)
- The 17 Day Diet
If ever there was a diet which was able to cash in on humans’ desire for quick results, it’s the superbly named “17 Day Diet”.
It went on to give Dr. Mike Moreno a best-selling book, in which he tells us to change our calories and macronutrient targets every 17 days.
I know what you’re wondering…. why 17 days?
Cuz magic, bro!
Mike wants you to get outside and walk for 17 minutes per day, stop eating carbohydrates after 2pm, and work through each of four 17 day phases which all have tremendous names; ‘Accelerate’, ‘Activate’, ‘Achieve’, and ‘Arrive’!
Moreno claims that this will “confuse your metabolism” (spoiler; it fucking won’t) and then “activate your skinny jeans” (oh jeez) and help you unlock the body of your dreams.
Why The 17 Day Diet Doesn’t Work:
1. No calorie targets are given, so the customer has no idea how much food to eat.
2. They tell you that carbohydrates eaten after 2pm will be stored as fat, which is a lie.
3. They claim that you’ll lose up to 12lbs during the first 17 days by “clearing your body of unwanted toxins which affect your metabolism”. This is absolute nonsense, and the vast majority of weight lost is just water due to low/zero carbohydrates.
4. In phase four of the program you’re instructed to grab a recurring subscription to their supplement line.
- The Atkins Diet
Yep, it’s the fad diet of all fad diets.
This thing was a phenomenon during the early 2000s, and it went down in history as the first diet plan to have a cult-like following where people would go bat-shit crazy in their attempts to recruit others to their new-found way of live (a tactic since used by keto, paleo, carnivore, Juice Plus, and many more!).
But awesome marketing campaign’s aren’t enough to develop a great diet plan, and under the surface we can see that this is just another very low carb diet plan.
Why The Atkins Diet doesn’t work:
1. Reducing your carbs to less than 20g/day is very unsustainable for most people.
2. The diet promises weight loss of up to 15lbs within the first 2 weeks, but as you know by now, this is made up almost entirely of fucking water.
3. This is a very high fat meal plan so your cholesterol will go through the roof. (12)
4. Atkins was largely responsible for the demonization of carbohydrate in the early 2000s, which we now know was absolute false information.
5. Your breath will honk.
- The Alkaline Diet
Oh, fuck.
This diet plan is based around the crazy concept of changing your body’s pH levels to encourage fat loss, which you’ll do by purchasing a bunch of awful-tasting sludge smoothies from some motherfucker running a pyramid scheme out of their kitchen.
Aside from the supplements you’ll be restricted to a very low calorie diet consisting of fish, vegetables, seeds, and nuts.
Oh, and in a somewhat satisfying turn of events, the doctor who wrote this bullshit was recently banged up for practicing without a license.
Why The Alkaline Diet doesn’t work:
1. You’ll eat from a very restrictive list of foods.
2. The vast majority of weight lost is just water due to zero/low carbohydrates.
3. The whole concept of changing your body’s pH levels is false. You cannot do this, and even if you found a way to do it, you’d die. (13)
4. Once again you’re instructed to grab a recurring subscription to a bunch of over-priced supplements.
- The Raw Food Diet
Every workplace has a “hunter gatherer”, right?
And if you try telling him that catching those chicken breasts in the aisles of Asda isn’t quite how to cavemen did it, he’ll loses his mind!
The Raw Food Diet is aimed at guys like this, with all of its talk about being “primal” “hunters”, but under the surface it’s just another low carbohydrate diet plan – except this time it also encourages you to eat raw meat! Fuck that with a capital fist.
Why The Raw Food Diet doesn’t work:
1. You’ll be eating from a very restrictive list of foods.
2. Constant meal prep.
3. Eating raw meat is not only disgusting, it’s downright dangerous!
4. The vast majority of weight lost is just water due to low carbohydrates and will return when you eventually get sick of living like a fucking idiot.
4. This is a very expensive diet because all food must be bought fresh.
5. The creators claim that eating food in a raw state preserves more nutrients, but while some vegetables do lose a little of their value during the cooking process others actually need it in order to unlock their full benefits.
Russ’ Take-Home Advice
Have I helped you avoid trying one of these things?
I fucking hope so.
Fad diets will be around forever because people love the idea of quick fixes, but make no mistake, they’re a recipe for disaster (pun intended!).
Ironically, building a great body is much easier than many of these nonsensical diets will have you believe. All you have to do is be consistent in the gym and continue to hit your daily nutrition targets over time – and there’s a whole bunch of ways you can do that without living like a fucking rabbit!
References:
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- Schaefer, J. T., et al. A Review of Interventions that Promote Eating by Internal Cues. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (2014).
- Bruce, L. J., et al. A systematic review of the psychosocial correlates of intuitive eating among adult women. Appetite (2016).
- Howell S., et al. “Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake: the hope, hype, and science of calories. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab (2017).
- Leibel R.L., et al. Energy intake required to maintain body weight is not affected by wide variation in diet composition. Am J Clin Nutr (1992).
- Tiwari S., et al. Insulin’s impact on renal sodium transport and blood pressure in health, obesity, and diabetes. Am J Renal Physiology (2007).
- Smith C. F., et al. Flexible vs. Rigid dieting strategies: relationship with adverse behavioral outcomes. Appetite (1999).
- Stewart T. M., et al. Rigid vs. flexible dieting: association with eating disorder symptoms in nonobese women. Appetite (2002).
- Malik N., et al. Are long‐term FAD diets restricting micronutrient intake? A randomized controlled trial. Food Sci Nutr (2020).
- Birmingham, C. L., et al. Human chorionic gonadotropin is of no value in the management of obesity. Can Med Assoc J (1983).
- Lijesen, G. K., et al. The effect of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) in the treatment of obesity by means of the Simeons therapy: a criteria-based meta-analysis. Br J Clin Pharmacol (1995).
- Retterstol K., et al. Effect of low carbohydrate high fat diet on LDL cholesterol and gene expression in normal-weight, young adults: A randomized controlled study. Atherosclerosis (2018).
- Angeloco L., et al. Alkaline Diet and Metabolic Acidosis: Practical Approaches to the Nutritional Management of Chronic Kidney Disease. J Ren Nutr (2018).