To explore this question accurately let’s first assess what the terms used represent.
What do we mean by the term diet?
How do we measure the success of the diet?
Over what period of time do the results last?
In common usage, the term diet (particularly in popular magazines) represents a structured eating pattern usually requiring calorific restriction. Often these types recommend a restriction in the amount and/or type of food. Their claim is to lose an amount of weight in a period of time (usually a short amount of time).
By following these restrictive and highly regimented eating patterns it is not difficult to lose a few kilograms of weight fairly quickly. This is often achieved by ridding the body of amounts of water, (itself a potentially dangerous procedure), for a short period of time. Whilst the eating pattern is often highly restrictive, most participants are willing to put up with adverse side effects (hunger, lack of energy…) as their weight is getting less.
If the aim of the exercise is to reduce your weight, then more than likely you will reach your desired outcome, losing a few kilograms.
So yes diets do work!
But here is the fine print…A large part of this weight loss is not fat, but water! And when you resume your normal dietary habits, as you will inevitably do, you will normally find that not only do you regain weight, but you will often put on additional weight.
So more accurately we could more accurately say that crash diets often do work in the short term if weight is the only measure of success.
Why?
Quite simply, it’s the same reason that you found yourself with an excess of fat in the first place. Your calorific intake has been greater over a period of time than your calorific expenditure. This results in an excess of energy, which if not used or excreted will be stored, often in the form of fat. When this occurs over a period of time, the result is a significant increase in your weight.
Without significant behavioural modification in relation to your eating patterns, you will return to your previous dietary habits resulting in an excess of calories, often stored as fat, which will result in your weight increasing once again. The return to your previous patterns is inevitable as you can’t maintain the highly restrictive nature of the “crash diet”.
Additionally, portion sizes often begin to grow as you become less attentive over time.
As we have seen previously by combining an exercise program (which will increase the amount of energy expended) a greater percentage of your calorific intake is used, leaving less to be excreted and/or stored.
This is best achieved through a sensible, manageable, and maintainable process under the guidance of various professionals skilled and trained in these fields.
However, as we have seen in previous discussions, weight loss does not necessarily equate with fat loss. So if an objective is to achieve a healthier body by reducing the amount of fat we retain the crash diet has achieved nothing.
So, if your objective is to reduce the amount of stored fat your body carries, popular fad diets do not work!
In order to achieve long-lasting fat loss, measured by the reduction in body fat levels, a different skill set and mindset is required to that of a fad diet.
You’ll need to address lifestyle factors such as what and when you meet, the amounts you eat, what and when you drink, and the amount of exercise you have.
Both scheduled exercise and “Incidental exercise”, such as walking up stars rather than taking the elevator utilize more energy and reduce the amount of fat stored, whilst impacting on fat deposits you already have.
Obviously, a trained professional such as a dietician or nutritionalist, capable and skilled in accurately assessing your calorific or energy needs, and matching these needs accurately to your input can achieve lasting variations in various anthropometric measures.
A professional such is an exercise physiologist, skilled and trained in assessing, planning and implementing a suitable exercise program focused on the utilization of energy (primarily fat utilization) would be necessary in order to achieve long-term, enduring results.
Combined with these two factors are lifestyle behavioural modifications which need to be assessed and implemented in order to maintain these programs over a long period of time – in essence, for the rest of your life.
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