Lesa Turnquist | Copy Co-Editor

“Want to lose weight? Now you can take advantage of this program to help you start looking and feeling better. You can stop feeling bloated and start feeling lighter because your body will be working more efficiently because of our products. We’ll give you a 30-day supply for free. Just pay shipping and handling.”

Heard this sales pitch before? Fad diets keep trying to hit the health trends, but they are a BUST. Fad diets may work in the short term, but if you want to achieve a healthy weight and maintain it in the long run, it’s more than just following a diet plan; it’s developing a lifestyle.

Some fad diets may seem to work because you lose a lot of weight in a short amount of time; however, once you quit the diet, you’ll eventually go right back to where you started. These are not lifestyle diets.

The science behind losing the weight in a short amount of time is often times because one of these reasons: they help you lose healthy weight such as lean muscle; they decrease your caloric intake so you’re almost starving, which slows your metabolism down; or they take out a main nutrient such as carbohydrates, which actually are needed to burn fat, the unhealthy weight.

According to an article by the health educational website Everyday Health, these are some tricks to distinguishing a fad diet from a lifestyle diet:

• The diet promises that you will lose weight fast or at an unrealistic pace.
• The claims sound too good to be true.
• The diet’s recommendations are based on a single study – or no research at all.
• The diet’s recommendations seem extreme.
• Statements made about the diet are refuted by reputable scientific organizations.
• It refers to foods as “good” or “bad”.
• Personal testimonials are used to “sell” the diet.
• The fad diet involves crash dieting, or very intense reductions in eating and drinking.

These fad diets don’t allow you to get to a healthy state or help you maintain your weight loss; however, I do have at least three recommendations for your own lifestyle diet. I, myself, have been following these guidelines for several years now, and it has definitely been working for me in weight control, exercise performance, optimal nutrition, and good health.

Know your Nutrition Facts Label. I have made it a habit of looking at the Nutrition Facts Label when I’m going to buy something from the store before I’ve even bought it. I really try not to keep foods around that don’t look good on the label. The Food and Drug Administration has a really good page on their website about what all those numbers mean if you aren’t quite sure about reading the label on your own: http://www.fda.gov/Food/IngredientsPackagingLabeling/LabelingNutrition/ucm274593.htm

Eat six meals a day. Yes! You read that right! The way you should look at it is: breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, supper, snack. According to the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), if you eat small, frequent meals, your body won’t produce as much fat because blood sugar levels will be maintained so there isn’t excess insulin. If that made no sense, just trust me, and we can talk exercise science another time.

Watch portion sizes. With eating six times a day, it doesn’t mean you should eat a full course meal every time. Because you’ll be eating more often, you won’t be as hungry when it’s time to eat next. You should not completely fill your plate and feel completely stuffed when you’re done eating. Again, you should never go completely hungry with those small frequent meals so your body won’t feel the need to overcompensate. Also, just because something is on your plate, doesn’t mean you have to eat it, especially if you didn’t choose the serving of food yourself such as when you go out to eat. Restaurants serve us way too much food. Something I like to do often is cut everything on my plate in half. I eat one portion and ask for a to go box for the other portion. One, you won’t feel like you have to eat the whole thing, and two, you save money because you just got another entire meal out of that for the next day!

It’s always good to know the reason why behind something. Those three lifestyle diet guidelines all have reasons to prove why they work; it’s not just a scam. Keep an eye out for those fad diets, and stick to developing a lifestyle diet that will help you lose and maintain a healthy weight forever and not just a short time. Again, it’s not even really a “diet”; it’s just a lifestyle!

Graphic by Justice Gage