While most weight-loss diets can help you lose some weight, sometimes quickly they may be unsuccessful over the long run for a number of reasons. We often hear stories of someone doing everything right on a diet but still barely losing a very small amount of weight, and even regaining lost weight over time.
Even when weight loss research studies have dieters on carefully controlled calories, food types, and physical activity, and with intensive counseling, teaching, and monitoring — the weight loss and other health benefits (such as improved cholesterol and reduced blood pressure) tend to disappear soon after the study ends. So what’s the problem?
Researchers say it’s the kind of diet many people try that doesn’t get the job done–or just plain doesn’t work. Here are a few:
1. The 17-Day Diet
“The 17 Day Diet ” book, published in 2011 and written by a California family practice physician, talks about a four-stage weight loss plan that involves you focusing on low-carbohydrate foods.
With each 17-day stage, dieters must vary their intake of carbohydrates, fruits, vegetables and protein. Dieters are also encouraged to substitute healthy ingredients for unhealthy ones, such as mustard for mayonnaise, and can’t eat certain fruits and carbohydrates after 2 p.m. Dieters must also walk for 17 minutes a day.
Like the Dukan Diet, this diet involves cutting back on carbohydrates, thereby reducing the amount a person eats in a typical meal.
Why it doesn’t work: Nutrition experts say the healthy ingredient swaps are examples of small diet changes that can pay off for long-term weight loss instead of just cutting out carbs altogether. But other aspects such as the 17-day cycles and the rule about no fruit or carbohydrates after 2 p.m. serve no purpose for weight loss and are just gimmicks.
2. The Atkins Diet
The Atkins Diet, devised by Dr. Robert Atkins in the 1970s, is one of the most popular low-carb, high-protein fad diets on the market, and claims to help people lose up to 15 pounds in the first two weeks of the diet.
Atkins works by limiting dieters’ carbohydrate intake and upping fiber intake, so that the body burns fat instead of carbohydrates. It includes four phases; the first phase has dieters limit carbohydrate intake but encourages liberal consumption of protein-rich meat and fish, eggs, cheese, salad vegetables, butter and oil. With each phase, dieters add in more carbohydrates until they find the balance where they are no longer gaining weight from their diet.
Why it doesn’t work: Like other low-carb diets, water loss accounts for much of the weight loss at the beginning of the diet.
Healthy weight loss takes time and should not be drastic, said Stella Volpe, a registered dietitian and professor and chairwoman of the Department of Nutrition Sciences at Drexel University in Philadelphia.
Many of us don’t want to hear this, but people need to come to terms with that if they’re going to do it right, it will take time.
3. Any Kind of Detox Diet
Now, don’t get me wrong–I love a great detox every now and again to reset your body and clean out any unwanted toxins. But it’s the reason behind your detox that makes this a troublesome diet.
“Detox” diets (like Master Cleanse, the Hallelujah Diet, and The Martha’s Vineyard Diet Detox) may be popular to see an accelerated weight loss, but the long-term effects are not there–trust me, I’ve tried nearly all of them. Extreme regimens calling for procedures like liver flushes, bodily cleanses, colonics, hormone injections, and more are highly suspect, experts say.
Why it doesn’t work: Your body is well equipped with organs, such as the liver and kidneys, and the immune system, to rid itself of potential toxins and does an excellent job of cleansing itself without needing flushes or cleanses.
Be mindful that if any of those organs aren’t working properly, then a detox from certain foods and ingredients could help–for those specific organs–but not for your weight loss.
4. The HCG Diet
The HCG diet involves a combination of calorie restriction consuming anywhere from 500 to 800 calories a day, which is about a quarter to a half of the recommended daily calorie intake and supplementation with human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone that is produced during pregnancy. HCG can be injected into the body or taken via a pill supplement.
HCG is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration for weight loss purposes, but is approved to treat fertility problems, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Why this doesn’t work: Weight loss comes when a person minimizes the amount of calories he or she eats and that’s likely why people lose weight on this diet, the Mayo Clinic said. However, it’s hard to maintain that low of a calorie intake over the long term, not to mention it’s hard to get the necessary nutrition from that small amount of food to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
The HCG hormone itself isn’t likely to have any effect on weight loss, research shows. Authors of a 1995 study, published in the British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology, reviewed the results of 24 studies on HCG and weight loss and found that HCG did not help to combat obesity, did not curb appetite or promote feelings of well-being and did not spur weight loss or fat distribution
5. The Dunkan Diet
“The Dukan Diet” book was released today (April 19) in the United States, and is already a fad-diet phenomenon in France. The diet was devised by French doctor and nutritionist Pierre Dukan and includes four phases.
The first phase allows dieters to eat unlimited protein, the second phase allows dieters to eat protein and vegetables, the third phase lets dieters add starches, fruit, cheese and bread, and the fourth phase allows dieters anything they want, so long as they take the stairs whenever possible, set aside one day of the week as a protein-only day and eat three teaspoons of oat bran a day. Dieters are encouraged to limit intake of carbohydrates throughout the diet.
The bulk of the American diet is carbohydrates, said David Levitsky, professor of psychology and nutritional sciences at Cornell University in New York. Because they make up so much of the typical meal, it’s easy to cut out carbs and reduce calorie intake.
Why it doesn’t work: By cutting out carbs, a person is really losing water weight, not fat, Levitsky said. Reducing carbohydrates decreases sodium, which leads to an increase in water loss. Water loss is most evident in the face, which can make weight loss appear greater than it actually is, he said.
6. Miracle Ingredient(s) Diets
You’ve probably seen commercials about diets with ‘miracle’ foods or ingredients like supplements, fructose water, bitter orange, green tea, apple cider vinegar. The advertisement usually talks about how a doctor or scientist “found” this ingredient that has been around for years and they harnessed its power in their “patented weight loss system” to now see results. The only thing is, that just isn’t true. Dieters are always searching for the food, pill, or potion that will help them lose weight, but unfortunately, there are no such miracle ingredients. No one single food or group of foods eaten together or at a certain time of day has any impact on weight loss.
Be very skeptical of any plan that recommends a shelf full of supplements, enzymes, or potions (especially if you purchase them from the diet book author or company).
Why it doesn’t work: Your body doesn’t need expensive supplements. Experts agree that if you want to take a once daily multivitamin for nutritional insurance, that is fine, but otherwise, we recommend you get your nutrients from food.
So What Does Work?
Based on the research found in a Harvard Medical School report that showed how many of these popular diets don’t work, you might be tempted to throw up your hands and give up on weight-loss diets altogether. But there are some ways your diet plan could work.
What Works: Focus on Your Amount (Quantity)
There are some psychological effects that every dieter is all too familiar with: intense cravings for foods you have eliminated, bingeing on junk food after falling off the wagon, an intense preoccupation with food. A growing body of research shows why these tendencies undermine most people’s diet efforts and confirms that the way around these pitfalls is moderation. Making small changes to your eating patterns, ones you can build on slowly over time, is truly the best pathway to lasting weight loss. Although you may have heard this message of moderation before, the evidence is finally too overwhelming to ignore.
What Works: Focus on the Time (Duration)
There’s another way of looking at this: it probably matters less which diet you pick (whether low-carb, low-fat, or something in between) than whether you stick with it.
The average duration of the studies included in this analysis was six months. What if they’d lasted 12 months, or two years, or a lifetime? The benefit would likely have been greater and more long-lasting. The trick is to pick an eating plan with foods you actually like so that it’s not so hard to stick with it.
Also, if this research has taught us anything, it is that there is no such thing as one size fits all when it comes to diet plans–the key is to find one that fits your lifestyle. The best diet is one you can safely and realistically stick with for the long term, plain and simple.
A true diet or meal plan should be flexible enough to fit into your real life and should encourage healthier eating by focusing on balance, variety, and moderation.
In fact, the best “diet” may not be a diet at all.
