New diets: Are they bologna?

Before you got to university, you said to yourself you would never gain the infamous “freshman 15,” but you just looked at the scale and not only have you put on 15 pounds, but another 10 on top of that. You’re now thinking to yourself… “How the hell am I going to lose this weight?”

Each year, countless amounts of people turn to fad diets hoping to drop pounds, and gain a slimmer, trimmer body. The promise at the end of the day is that you will lose weight quickly with little to no exercise. The problem with these diets is that they have no long-term weight loss results, and the diets themselves are not very healthy; they are just quick fixes with no permanent solutions.

The Atkins Diet, the Zone, the Cabbage Diet, Hydroxycut, Slim Fast, the Blood Type Diet, cleanses and fasts are just a few of these “fad diets” to look out for.

Sure, you may see dramatic weight loss at the beginning, but don’t be surprised if your body goes through a pattern called “yo-yoing” or “weight-cycling”, which is losing weight, gaining weight, and then losing again.

Dena Sykes, a private nutritionist and fitness instructor at Big Hill Leasure Pool, says she sees this all the time.

“It always blows my mind when both men and women come in asking for help because they can’t figure out why there are not losing weight on these ‘get slim quick schemes’.”

“Fad diets make you concentrate on the food you are eating and forgetting about the exercise you should be adding,” says Sykes. “You can workout six times a week for three hours a day, but if you’re still eating shitty foods afterwards, don’t be alarmed when the numbers on the scale aren’t dropping.”

It’s no surprise that you see dramatic weight loss, with these insane diets. The initial weight loss is water weight; fooling you in to believing that it’s excess fat you are losing. When you go off of the diet more likely than not you will gain back the water weight, the weight you lost, plus additional pounds says Yahoo online contributor, Deanna Sletten.

So why do some of these diets seem to work? It’s simple. The new diet focuses in on a certain way to eat, whether it is cutting out wheat, controlling your portion sizes, eating mostly protein or taking “special diet pills” that magically drop the numbers on the sale with no lifestyle change. But after a while you will start to add calories and snack a little more each day.

Sykes says, “The biggest thing that you can do to lose weight is to change your lifestyle […] it’s as easy as that.”

Sykes believes that you need to make changes that will best fit your lifestyle: eliminate the junk food, watch your portion sizes, know how many calories you need, be realistic and use your common sense. Everyone’s body is different, so stop looking at celebrities and comparing yourselves.

Being a university student can usually mean that you are running on hardly any sleep, whether it’s because of tests and assignments, or partying and a lot of the time — it’s usually a combination of both. Our stress level remains high and sometimes we need that extra quick pick me up of losing a couple extra pounds.

Be patient! The worst thing to do is to turn to a fad diet. These diets are doing way more harm than good. It takes four weeks for you to notice your body is changing, eight weeks for your friends to notice and 12 weeks for the rest of the world to notice. Don’t stop!