By Angela Kerrisk from Activate Fitness

If you scroll through social media, you are bound to see hundreds or even thousands of posts about fad diets, juice cleanses, detox teas, and tons of other products marketed to promote rapid weight loss.

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Dieting is a 72 billion dollar a year industry, so it is no wonder why diet culture marketing is so prevalent.
But what is a fad diet and how do you tell if you are following one?

Weight-loss advice comes in literally hundreds of disguises, so how do you spot the red flags of a fad Diet? Most often these new and revolutionary diets are really old fad diets making a comeback!

These usually promise quick weight loss, sound too good to be true, and do not follow eating guidelines that support good health.

Many of us would like to lose a few pounds, however, you shouldn’t be tempted by the increasing range of quick fix options making unrealistic weight loss promises for minimum effort.

There is no fad diet you can follow without some associated nutritional or health risk and most offer a short-term fix to a long-term problem.

Stay away from diets that:

* Ban a specific food or food group. Fad diets are typically very restrictive
* Promises weight loss of over two pounds (1kg) per week
* Claims that sound too good to be true
* Lists of "good" and "bad" foods
* Recommendations made to help sell a product
* Promises a cure-all, ingredient or product to solve your weight problem without having to change your lifestyle
* Does not encourage physical activity
* Does not provide support for long-term weight loss success

Sadly, there is no magic solution to losing weight and keeping it off long-term. People will often try anything that promises to help them lose weight. They may want to look or feel better and companies that promote fad diets take advantage of this.

Fad diets work for a short amount of time. In most cases, this is because you eat fewer calories than normal and you also pay more attention to what you eat. By cutting out major groups of foods, you won’t get the nutrients your body needs to be healthy.

If you lose weight too quickly and there is no support to help you keep the weight off, you could get stuck in a cycle of weight loss and weight gain. This yo-yo dieting is stressful for your body. However, it’s likely that most of the weight you lose is from water and lean muscle, not body fat.

Most people then get fed-up with the restrictions, start eating more, choose less healthy foods and pile the pounds back on and that yo-yo cycle continues to the next magic fad!

They define successful weight loss as losing weight and keeping it off for at least five years. So what’s the best advice for getting rid of the extra pounds and keeping them off. It may be obvious, but to lose weight you need to make healthier choices, eat a nutritionally balanced and varied diet with appropriately sized portions and be physically active.

If you need help to figure out what weight loss plan will work best for you think about seeing a nutrition coach where you will learn healthy and sustainable diet and lifestyle habits.

This is the role of a nutrition coach, and they can set individualised action steps like working on incorporating more veggies in your diet, incorporating more activity when you aren’t at the gym, getting better sleep, and holding you accountable to engaging in these habits long term, with a goal to help you become the healthiest version of yourself.

If you would like more information on nutrition and nutrition coaching, contact us www.activate.ie/programs/nutrition/.