Diet Trends

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend. I'm sure we all pigged out more than we wanted to, and it's OK! Life is about choice and enjoying what the world has to offer. It's OK to eat hamburgers and fries on occasion with a tall glass of vodka and Redbull. As long as you don't let your cheats be a way back into an unhealthy lifestyle, I see no problem with it. Today on Trendy Tuesdays, I want to discuss why I am such a disbeliever in most diet trends.

We have all heard about diet trends that pop up every year or so. One of the most popular I can remember is the Atkins Diet. This was a diet that made you scared of any kind of carbs. It was real popular because people would lose weight by avoiding carbs. Well, what ended up happening is a lot of people got sick or got even fatter once they got off the diet. Another one that I tried before was the Anabolic Diet. This diet was similar to Atkins. It made you not eat carbs for 12 days, then after 12 days you eat carbs for 2 days, then continue a cycle of shocking your body pretty much. I will say, my wife and I lost a lot of weight when we tried this 5 years ago. The problem was that you had to eat all the time. After a couple of weeks I was tired of cooking 4-5 meals a day and really didn't have the time to. Our grocery bill was real high too because of all the meat we had to consume. The most recent one is the Paleo Diet, which I talked about last week. This is again the same ole story about avoiding carbs and eating only meat, veggies, and fruit for the most part. Check out my post from earlier last week to see what I say about the Paleo Diet.

So why the hate? These diets work for some people, I will admit that. For the average person though, I think they are a little too much. I think someone can achieve weight loss and good health by just being smart about what they eat and not over consume. By being on a fad diet, there is a little part of everybody that knows that this may not work, so when crunch time comes, it is easy to just give up. By eating what you want, but being smart about it, you can enjoy life more and not have to be the guy at dinners who refuses to eat a roll or goes for a bunless hamburger.

In conclusion, I will say that some diets are extremely beneficiary to people who have health concerns. If a doctor tells you to stay away from wheat, red meat, or dairy, then I suggest you follow orders. If you got fat because you have gotten lazy and eat way too much fast food, then a fad diet is probably not going to work. You need to get moving, educate yourself on what your body really needs, and watch your calorie intake. We eat more than we do anything, so don't take the fun out of it, just be smart.