Warning on fad diets
THEY say you are what you eat.
Nutrition is a big part of staying healthy and fit but fad diets have become all the rage to lose weight, but are often just a quick-fix solution to a long-term problem.
Zoe Calleja and Marlo Elms are accredited practising dietitians at Compleat Nutrition and specialise in contemporary health coaching strategies to help set achievable health goals.
Ms Calleja explained how fad diets were unrealistic and unnecessary to lose weight.
“The things that fad diets promise are very appealing and usually things that everybody wants, so the thought is, ‘I might as well give it a try, it won’t hurt’, but we would like to argue that it can hurt,” she said.
“They are designed for people to fail and to be difficult, and people beat themselves up after they break that diet when it is more the diet’s fault than their own fault.”
Ms Elms says the popularity of fad diets was hyped by social media, explaining before-and-after photos could be powerful in selling the “results” of the diet.
“Fad diets come in fashion over years and they are repacked and rebranded as something different, like the Atkins and the Keto diet that are quite similar,” she said.
“The thing about a Keto diet is that you lose a lot of weight in the interim and it’s not fat loss, it’s water weight loss, so people get sucked into losing weight quickly,” she said.
Fad diets are not a permanent solution for people to reach a healthy goal weight, Ms Elms said. She said they encouraged people to develop bad eating habits.
“When you restrict whole food groups from your diet people don’t learn the skills and knowledge to eat healthy, and maintain the weight loss in the long term,” she said.
Ms Calleja said a general guideline to healthy eating included wholefoods like wholemeal bread and pasta. She also stressed the importance of incorporating fruit and vegetables in a daily diet.
“There was a study done in Australia in 2015 and only 14 per cent of Australians were meeting the daily servings of fruit and only 4 per cent were meeting the daily recommended serves of vegetables,” she said.
The consequences for not choosing a healthy diet to follow can be detrimental to our health, with Ms Calleja saying fad diets hamper the likelihood of maintaining a goal weight.
“You can develop deficiencies; fatigue is a big one because you will have no energy because carbs is what gives us energy, so you are running on nothing,” she said.