Why Fad Diets Don’t Work Part One
To have visible abs you simply need to have 7% or lower body fat. This is then involves exercise to burn fat, and a good diet that will help the body to keep that fat off. As losing weight and toning abs is such a popular objective, this has lead to the creation of a whole industry of ‘fad diets’ and special programmes developed to help lose fat quickly and to recreate celebrity physiques. But unfortunately they aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
The first thing to realise when picking a diet for fat loss however is that fad diets will not work. The central concept behind most fad diets is to entirely cut out one element of your diet, or even all of the diets. The victims here often being carbohydrates and fats. Some diets even recommend surviving on just baby food while others go even further suggesting just syrup!
These diets are doomed to failure from the start. We are designed as omnivores due to the environment we developed in. That’s the way our bodies are wired and to go against that will not help us to lose weight – in fact it will have quite the opposite effect and cause us serious problems for our health. For example, eliminating fat from our diet will cause our skin and scalp to become flaky, our hair to become thin and our nails to break. At the same time fat is crucial in helping us to utilise the protein in our body to heal wounds and build muscle. In this way then, eliminating even fat will cause more health problems than weight loss.
At the same time, eliminating carbohydrates will cause problems with energy, leaving our bodies with no glycogen to burn during the day. This will leave us feeling lethargic and possibly even depressed, and will severely damage our workouts in the gym (which would be a far more useful way to burn fat).