How to Know if a Weight Loss Diet is Healthy
Choose a Healthy Diet that Will Promote Success
Feb 26, 2009
With over 70% of Americans attempting to follow a weight loss diet at least once each year, the weight loss industry has become a billion dollar business. Millions of American repeatedly spend money on diets that don’t work. At a time when wallets are thin and waist bands are expanding it is important to be able to identify what is a health diet that will promote lasting weight loss and what is a scam.
Before spending money and time on a new weight loss diet, ask the following questions.
Does the Diet Offer a Quick Fix?
Many diets pull you in with the promise of quick and easy weight loss. For example the cabbage soup diet promotes that you can lose up to 10 pounds in a single week. The 72 hour diet pill promises that you will lose 12 pounds in just 72 hours. What these diets don’t tell you is that you are likely to gain the weight back just as fast. A quick fix diet can throw you into a diet cycle that can prevent lasting weigh loss.
A successful weigh loss diet includes principles that can be incorporated into your daily eating patterns and can become a permanent part of your life style. Avoid crash diets. Instead follow a diet that promotes a gradual loss of 1 to 2 pounds a week, which allows for a healthy weight loss that can be maintained.
Does the Diet Recommend to Stop Eating Specific Food Groups?
In order to maintain a health body and mind, a person must eat a wide variety of different food. Some diets have you cut foods from the diet to promote weight loss but may harm you by creating an out of balance diet and depriving you of necessary nutrients. For example the Atkins diet requires a person to cut out carbohydrates. By doing this you limit the intake of glucose, the brain's power source. The Atkins diet also encourages the increase of high protein foods. This tends to increase the amount of saturated fat consumed, which may increase the risk of heart disease.
A healthy weight loss diet allows for a person to intake all food in moderation. Remember there is no such thing as good and bad foods.
Does the Author have the Credentials to be Providing Health Information?
When researching a weight loss diet make sure not only to look at the nutrition information but also look at the author’s information. Many diets are marketed by someone with no medical or nutrition back ground. It is important the diet is coming form a credible source that can be trusted to give you safe information.
A safe weigh loss diet should be written by a Medical Doctor or a Registered Dietitian. Don’t be fooled by people who call themselves “fitness experts” or “nutritionists”.
Does the Diet Maintain a Balance Between Food and Physical Activity?
If it sounds too good to be true, it mostly likely is. A weight loss diet that requires no effort is not going to provide lasting effects. Research has shown that a diet combined with an exercise programs provides greater long-term weight loss than just diet alone.
Look for a weight loss diet that promotes a balance between reducing calorie and increasing physical exercise.
If you can not answer “yes” to all of these questions, the diet does not promote a healthy weight loss that will have lasting effects. It is best to look for a different diet that not only provides healthy weight loss but will also create confidence by offering lasting results.
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