Fad diets are popular because they are like shiny new toys, they seem to offer immediate sparkling results, with celebrity followers. So they must be great, right? Er, no, so let’s look at the downside you will not see in the magazines …

If you look at definitions of the word ‘fad’ you will see that it means a trend that does not last. It has a huge rise in popularity, and sales disproportionate to the length of time in the market, and then it will fade away pretty much as quickly as it arrived. Now, if you take that description, and then apply it to diets, you have to wonder why a diet would suddenly appear, be massively popular and then disappear, and the only reason is that it did not work!

Let me back this up with a few fad diets – the maple syrup diet was one, the cabbage soup another, and the grapefruit diet … all Hollywood type diets requiring you to eat special foods. All of these had celebrity endorsements with well known personalities claiming the diet had worked for them in all of the magazines. They also always promise quick results.

The reason they provide quick results is because most of them are starvation diets. The maple syrup model basically involves surviving on water with a couple of things added in. Cabbage soup in itself is healthy food, but it hardly has any calories. That will see the weight drop off for sure, but you cannot safely keep to it for long, and it’s not healthy. That is why fad diets do not hang around long in the glare of publicity.

So why are fad diets so attractive? Three reasons. First, we all want to believe that there is a miracle food plan out there that will cause us to lose weight fast without any effort. The truth is that losing weight is never easy and most people find that the faster we lose, the faster we gain it back the moment we slip off the diet.

Second, when we have tried to lose weight before and failed, it is easy to think that the advice we were given was wrong, and what we need is some new or different advice. So we ignore everything we know about healthy eating, because that didn’t work for us before, and jump on the latest new trend instead.

Third, the celebrity culture is partly to blame for the fad diet. We love to read about celebrities, especially if they are doing something new or weird. Let’s face it, it will not make headline news if you or I follow our doctor’s healthy eating advice and lose 1 lb per week for the next 6 months. It will sell more magazines if a top movie star has found a great new diet that means she has to eat some bizarre combination of foods and has lost 10 lb in one week!

So in summary, most of these plans are not viable long term. If there is one that follows basic healthy eating requirements, it is really just a variation on an established diet. Look for those if you like, but avoid fad diets.

Looking to make a change and lose some weight? I have reviewed the top diet on the internet and you can go and read over 200 comments people have made about why this diet has worked well for them, as well as some of the problems.

Tags: healthy food, miracle food plan, starvation

Never has there been more pressure to maintain a healthy weight than today.  When you take into consideration the fact that the average woman gains 25 to 35 pounds during the course of her pregnancy, it is obvious why so many new mothers are eager to lose weight after having a baby.

While your health, and your new baby’s health, should always be paramount, there are a few powerful tips that can help you lose weight after having a baby.  Here are five of them:

The most powerful tip to lose weight after having a baby is simply to breast-feed

Not only does it provide numerous benefits to both mother and baby, but it burns a massive amount of calories.  Breast-feeding between six and eight times a day, the average mother can burn up to 500 calories in 24 hours.  That’s equivalent to about a pound of body weight per week. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: breast feed, healthy food, healthy snacks, Never, new mothers, pregnancy

Kids often eat badly. I have gotten a lot of emails from families that say that the biggest challenge that they have with their kids is eating well. I am very fortunate in some ways that my kids do eat a lot of healthy food and don’t get the joke about kids not liking brocolli. But at the same time my son is horrible for never wanting to eat dinner and then snacking in the evening. Jaiden may be eating grapes and apples (cut up of course, dad has to do some work) in bed but the fact that my son is often missing out on all the goodness of a proper dinner does bother me some.

So as a fitness guy and as a father interested in getting the kids to eat everything and not just some things I thought that I would research around and see what i could find out about getting kids to eat better and here are a bunch of ideas

Your responsibility in your childrens eating

Changing the family’s diet begins with two realizations. The first is that teaching your children about good nutrition is as important as making sure they learn good manners, get good grades in school, get to bed on time, etc. Poorly fed children are sick more often, have increased risk of developing degenerative diseases at earlier ages, and tend to have weight problems sooner or later. Many children find it difficult to concentrate and learn as a result of poor nutrient status, too. I don’t know a responsible parent that wants any of these things to happen, but the reality is that ignoring the importance of good nutrition will almost guarantee that one of these outcomes will occur sooner or later. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: brocolli, child food, diet, fitness, good nutrition, healthy food, kids, kids diet, kids eating, table food

I just came back from a family trip to Disneyland and I think that my eating suffered worse than I had hoped. In the end my wife and I realized that with better planning we could have eaten better. So I thought I would type out some tips to better vacation eating.

Planning – If you plan your eating you are way ahead of the game. We ate out a couple of times easily and with fast food, but as we all know this is the lowest quality food possible. After two days we ended up at a WalMart and a nearby grocery store and bought up good snacks and lots of fruit. And where able to eat a lot better and feel a lot better by eating well on the last two thirds of our vacation.

Fruits and vegetables – On a vacation you tend to eat nearly no fresh fruit or vegetables as all you get is from restaurants. Make sure you do the above that I noted and if need be go to a grocery store 2 or 3 times in your trip to buy lots of fruits an vegetables. In Califonia and many other states it is really easy as well during this time of year to find lots of fruit stands that sell high quality produce and compared to a restaurant you are still far ahead.

Eat a better breakfast – Many hotels offer a free breakfast and I planned to save money by having us all eat at the hotel for breakfast but it turned out to be standardly low in quality. Our hotel offered donuts, toast (with squeezable margarine), bad muffins and coffee. Not a good breakie by any stretch. Instead use the tools that are offered to you. We had access to a microwave at the hotel kitchen so you can just bring in your own oatmeal or even some kind of real breakfast food if you want ot save money.

Remember that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, especially on vacation so eat a great breakfast so you are not looking longingly at the McDonalds at 11:00. Maybe make your breakfast a restaurant meal instead of lunch or dinner.

Have plenty of snacks around – We ate a lot of snack food while away, pretzels, grapes, water, apples, baked chips. Many where high in carbs but they tasted good and one of the problems is that on vacation you fall back into the eating three big meals a day instead of spacing your food out. I never did get it quite right on this vacation but if you can be snacking on healthy food you can even get healthier as you vacation instead of gaining weight that you need to lose later.

Choose better at restaurants – Restaurant eating is always one of my highlights of a family vacation but eating well is difficult because most restaurants have very high fat foods. To avoid this try to skip sauces, not use the butter and avoid all of the bread that they give you. And make sure to order the side salad.

Tags: food, healthy food, lowest quality food, microwave, real breakfast food, snack food

I just found an article over at Ediets of seven foods never to eat.

1. Doughnuts It’s hard to resist the smell of a Krispy Kreme doughnut, which is why I never step foot in the store. Doughnuts are fried chock-full of sugar and white flour and loads of trans fat.

According to the Krispy Kreme website, an average 3.5 ounce sugar doughnut weighs in with about 400 calories and contains few other nutrients besides fat. These sugary treats may satisfy your craving but it won’t satisfy your hunger as most of the calories come from fat.

“Eating a lot of refined sugar contributes to blood sugar swings or extreme fluctuations, eDiets Chief Nutritionist Susan Burke said.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: average fast-food cheeseburger, cancer, canned soup products, Center for Science, eDiets Chief Nutritionist, food, food chain, guard, hawaii, healthy food, heart attacks, hydrogenated oil, mcdonalds, obesity, oil containing unhealthy trans fats, Oscar, Oscar Mayer, potent cancer-causing chemicals, strokes, Susan Burke, the Public Interest, University of Hawaii

Here is an article that has become quite popular on the internet as a bit of information on what one person did and looked at things to Not Learn The Hard Way how to get in shape and improve his health.

This article proves that those that are sick can get themselves better by simply doing the right things and avoiding the wrong thing on a more general basis. sometimes I go into a little too much detail on how to get healthy when the most basic things are not being done by so many people.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: diabetes, food, healthy food, microwave, motor oil, oil, SET 50