January is littered with hungry new year’s resolutions trying to be actioned–and, as we’ve already found out, the number one on that list of resolutions is trying to lose weight. There’s many quick-fix diets that bear the promise of fixing all your weight woes in record time–but which of those can actually do you long-term harm that becomes hard to come back from? We spoke with dietitian Garima Goyal about exactly which types of diets can lead to big-time damage and doom…
These are the 4 fad diets people should avoid
1. The crash diet
We’ve all tried it–the crazy, wackadoodle diet that sounds extreme but also promises extreme results. Think Atkins, Keto, raw food, or Whole30. But Goyal warns against the incredible long-term harm that can come from them. “Anyone trying to get rapid weight loss results might switch to a crash diet where there’s a drastic reduction in calorie intake. You may feel like you are losing weight in the short run, but in reality, you are also slowing down your metabolism,” Goyal tells us.
“Due to the lack of calories consumed, the body starts conserving even the little quantity of food you eat to use it for energy. So, eventually, you gain all that weight back. Your body starts to feel like a yo-yo, constantly gaining and losing weight; which is very bad for heart health. Even the weight you’re losing is your body’s water and lean muscle–not its body fat. It also impacts immunity and can rise to several eating disorders.”
2. The cleanse
“This form of diet mainly focuses on consuming fluids,” Goyal classifies. “The logical explanation is that fluids help to flush out toxins from the body, but there’s is no real scientific evidence to prove that this type of cleanse diet actually cleanses the body of toxins.
On the contrary; this kind of diet can overload the kidneys and put unnecessary pressure on them, causing issues of frequent urination. You might find numbers dropping on the scale, but there are no health benefits.”
3. The HCG
“This is a kind of starvation diet that limits your calorie intake to a mere 500 a day, teamed with a hormonal supplement of human chorionic gonadotropin–HCG–a…