Diet fads are long lasting in many cases, and there is a new one everywhere you look. Diets that you first heard about ten years ago are still going strong today. If something is around that long, obviously it has to work, right? Not necessarily. In fact, while most of these diet fads will help you lose weight initially, it will not help you keep the weight off. These fad diets only work as long as you follow them. As soon as you go back to eating normally, stop taking the pills, or stop the shakes, you will gain back everything you lost and more.
This is what causes the diet rollercoaster that so many people are on today. They start a fad diet to lose weight, and once they lose everything they need to they go off of the diet, usually because it is expensive to maintain. Then, when they gain all the weight back, they try another fad diet in its place. Thus the rollercoaster continues indefinitely.
So how do you stop the rollercoaster ride? How do you know which diet to follow? The key to permanent weight loss is lifestyle changes. You can make small changes a bit at a time to make it easier for you, but the overall goal is to change the way you eat permanently so that you lose weight and keep it off.
For example, you will need to cut out sweets and fats as much as possible long term. But that doesn’t mean you have to stop cold turkey. Decide that you are only going to have dessert on certain nights of the week, and cut back slowly until you only have dessert one night per week. Instead of cutting out all sugars, try cutting out just soda pop, then just cookies or cakes. Focus on your weaknesses and make sure that you are weaning yourself off of these things. The rest of the diet and way of life will come naturally after that.
You will find that even these small lifestyle changes can do wonders for your weight loss goals. For example, you can easily lose fifty pounds in a few months just by cutting out soda pop. Keep these things in mind and avoid the diet fads.