The Real Truth Behind The Biggest Diet Myths
Many diet fanatics will swear that their latest discovery will help you shed the pounds. While drastically changing your eating habits will definitely show on the scale, the real challenge is sustainability in keeping those pounds off. This list below reveals the truth about some of most popular dieting myths from the last 30 years, and why you'd be better off just sticking to exercise and eating right:
The "Eat By Your Blood Type" Diet
Provides four possible eating plans based on your blood type. This is supposedly based on biochemistry and evolutionary theory. However, most experts point out there has been no scientific proof that matching your diet to one of these blood type plans will guarantee that you lose weight.
The "Lose Weight by Eliminating Any One Nutrient" Diet
This diet claims that you can eat as much as you want of everything else as long as you cut out at least one of the following nutrients: carbs, sugar or fat. But the reality is that when you cut out one nutrient entirely, you're likely to compensate with another. And although cutting back on sugar would be great, but depriving yourself from letting anything sweet pass your lips is just a recipe for a binge.
The "Eating the Same Food 24/7" Diet
Imagine eating plain tuna fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day just to lose a bit of weight. Similar method include the all fruit diet and the notorious cabbage soup diet. Now imagine doing this for the rest of your life because you're scared of gaining back all that weight. We doubt that anyone can seriously maintain this approach for longer than a couple of days.
The "Lose Weight by Avoiding Wheat" Diet
Gluten-free eating is when you cut out all wheat-based products from your diet in an effort to stay trim. But inless you have been officially diagnosed with a wheat sensitivity or celiac disease (intolerance to gluten), the only way you'll be losing weight from this diet is through unpleasant symptoms like diarrhea.
The "Separate Protein and Starches" Diet
This diet was based on the belief that since your stomach releases a variety of enzymes, each of these enzymes is responsible only for digesting a particular nutrient. By eating certain foods together like protein and starches, you create some sort of digestional havoc that keeps you from optimal weight and health. The reason why this is a load of hogwash is that this just isn't how digestion works. Acid released in the stomach cannot doesn’t distinguish between nutrients. It's main job is to pack food into smaller and smaller particles so nutrients that can be absorbed into the bloodstream while the rest becomes human waste.
The "Eat Like A Caveman" Diet
Promoted by diets like Paleo and the Warrior Diet, the rules involve eating only whole, unprocessed foods. However, they also offer "cheats" like you can eat sweet potatoes but not white, and butter but only if it's clarified. However, archeological findings have shown that our brains only became larger when we started to cook and turn grains into food.
The "Liquid Only" Diet
There's nothing wrong with doing a juice fast for a few days to jumpstart your diet, but the only thing you'll be losing in the long run is water weight. The problem with this diet is that you'll just as quickly gain it all back once you start eating real food again.
The "Baby Food Only" diet
Unless you just underwent a serious surgical procedure and can only stomach pureed food, eating like an infant just won't provide adequate protein or flavor that are needed to keep your adult body functioning.
Provides four possible eating plans based on your blood type. This is supposedly based on biochemistry and evolutionary theory. However, most experts point out there has been no scientific proof that matching your diet to one of these blood type plans will guarantee that you lose weight.
The "Lose Weight by Eliminating Any One Nutrient" Diet
This diet claims that you can eat as much as you want of everything else as long as you cut out at least one of the following nutrients: carbs, sugar or fat. But the reality is that when you cut out one nutrient entirely, you're likely to compensate with another. And although cutting back on sugar would be great, but depriving yourself from letting anything sweet pass your lips is just a recipe for a binge.
The "Eating the Same Food 24/7" Diet
Imagine eating plain tuna fish for breakfast, lunch, and dinner every single day just to lose a bit of weight. Similar method include the all fruit diet and the notorious cabbage soup diet. Now imagine doing this for the rest of your life because you're scared of gaining back all that weight. We doubt that anyone can seriously maintain this approach for longer than a couple of days.
The "Lose Weight by Avoiding Wheat" Diet
Gluten-free eating is when you cut out all wheat-based products from your diet in an effort to stay trim. But inless you have been officially diagnosed with a wheat sensitivity or celiac disease (intolerance to gluten), the only way you'll be losing weight from this diet is through unpleasant symptoms like diarrhea.
The "Separate Protein and Starches" Diet
This diet was based on the belief that since your stomach releases a variety of enzymes, each of these enzymes is responsible only for digesting a particular nutrient. By eating certain foods together like protein and starches, you create some sort of digestional havoc that keeps you from optimal weight and health. The reason why this is a load of hogwash is that this just isn't how digestion works. Acid released in the stomach cannot doesn’t distinguish between nutrients. It's main job is to pack food into smaller and smaller particles so nutrients that can be absorbed into the bloodstream while the rest becomes human waste.
The "Eat Like A Caveman" Diet
Promoted by diets like Paleo and the Warrior Diet, the rules involve eating only whole, unprocessed foods. However, they also offer "cheats" like you can eat sweet potatoes but not white, and butter but only if it's clarified. However, archeological findings have shown that our brains only became larger when we started to cook and turn grains into food.
The "Liquid Only" Diet
There's nothing wrong with doing a juice fast for a few days to jumpstart your diet, but the only thing you'll be losing in the long run is water weight. The problem with this diet is that you'll just as quickly gain it all back once you start eating real food again.
The "Baby Food Only" diet
Unless you just underwent a serious surgical procedure and can only stomach pureed food, eating like an infant just won't provide adequate protein or flavor that are needed to keep your adult body functioning.
