How can we recognize a miracle diet, what their risks to our health and what are the alternatives to them.
The warm months are preferred by advertisers of miracle diets to sneak into our life everywhere: appearing on our e-mails, on magazine covers and even on television a lot of different diets that promise us incredible results in a very short time and with very little effort.
“Lose 15 kilos in a month”, “Say goodbye to your belly in two weeks” … are some of the claims advertising with these diets try to catch our attention. How can we recognize a miracle diet and what are the consequences for our health?
How to recognize a miracle diet
Recognizing a miracle diet at first sight is not very difficult: what you are selling seems too good to be true? In that case, it is very possible that it is not. If there is something, they have in common all the miracle diets it is that they offer a massive weight loss (more than 2-3 kilos per month) and without any effort (“thin without starving or exercise”). And we should put this warning: too good to be true.
Another feature of these miracle diets is that they often eliminate a particular food group(such as the famous Dukan diet that demonizes in their first weeks carbohydrate intake) or, on the contrary, are based on a single food for that weight loss (here we have countless examples: the watermelon diet, the artichoke, the tomato …).
In addition, these diets are aimed at the general population and not customized for each individual who wants to follow: only need a quick internet search to begin to follow the diet of the points, the dissociated diet, diet Dolphin (yes, this also exists) or any other diet that we can think of . Many times these miracle diets urge us to buy certain products that only sell them: substitute food, draining herbal teas, shakes slimming … If you offer treat in exchange for buying their products, suspicion.
You may also like to read another article on CarolineJoyBlog: 10 anti-inflammatory foods you should include in your diet
The health risks of miracle diets
Are we going to lose weight with these diets? The truth is that as normal is that, especially at the beginning of the diet, we lower weight, but we think if we are doing it at the expense of our health. Most propose a miracle diets menus too low calorie for most people, that is, with far fewer calories than each of us need.
Eating for a few days far fewer calories than you’re used to and that our body needs is very likely that we lower weight, but we will mainly based on fluid loss and muscle mass (not fat mass).
The problem usually occurs when, after a while, this kind of extreme diets lose efficiency: on the one hand our body is wise and usually works with less “gasoline” that we have been giving, so you always need to reduce more and more calories. On the other, being extreme diets and non-customized for each of us, adhesion generated is zero: we do not see motivated to follow more than two or three weeks, a month if we are lucky. That’s when the dreaded appears “rebound effect”: return to eat as before (or more) when our body is already used to working with less fuel, and those kilos mercilessly accumulate as fat.
The precautions we should take to miracle diets
The most important thing when it comes to losing weight is that this is a gradual process, safe for our health, and offers us a food reeducation: a change of lifestyle habits that can be maintained over time permanently.
Medical professionals indicated to carry out these changes are dietitians, nutritionists. No one else in our country they are legally authorized to develop personalized diets and do it safely.
We should note that changes in our body cannot come from the overnight: if we want these changes to be lasting need to work slowly in our eating habits, see where we fail and put an appropriate solution. No need to take magical syrups, remove food or buy exotic products or foods that advertising tells us about their “slimming power”: a power being managed by a professional, with food readily available, seasonal and cooking techniques appropriate help us to lose the kilos left over us and keep this loss indefinitely.
