The 2016 Dieting Season is Off and Running...

After 22 years in this field I have to admit that I periodically get burnt-out on taking the time to read and review new diet books or websites!

Nearly 20 years ago Kelly Brownell PhD once likened fad-diets to trick candles that keep re-lighting when you try to blow them out. Each new crop of books (or websites) invariably claim, “to contain the REAL secrets to weight loss.” This of course is just basic marketing and it’s very effective, especially when the average consumer “knows” more misinformation than fact regarding human metabolism, energy balance, and body weight.

Since it’s January, I thought I’d take a look at what’s “hot” on the diet landscape

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How many more diets...?

I’ve been watching diets come and go—for over thirty years (twenty as a weight management professional). A well marketed diet book can pull down big money for publishers and authors, but do they deliver for the consumers buying them that are looking for answers?

For the most part diet books don’t deliver. The vast majority of diet books waste your time on nonsense that won’t—ever—produce results. Every book has its “magic formula,” usually some special combination of protein, fat and carbohydrates that the author asserts makes calories not count, and of course only the author has the secret to! As I've written about before, that's all nonsense.

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Intermittent Fasting: No Evidence of Enhanced Weight Loss

I recently wrote about why—theoretically—intermittent fasting (or alternate day fasting) actually has little likelihood of enhancing weight loss, over other forms of calorie restriction. (See: Alternate Day & Intermittent Fasting: Magic for Weight Loss or Just Another Fad?)

Today’s blog assesses the research that has specifically compared any kind of fasting regime (intermittent-calorie-restriction) to the typical dieting approach (constant-calorie-restriction) on weight loss.

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Alternate Day & Intermittent Fasting—Magic for Weight Loss or Just Another Fad?

There has been an explosion of diet books (The Fast Diet, The 5:2 Diet, The 8-Hour Diet, etc.) suggesting that manipulating the time frames you (allow yourself to) eat within can create metabolic-magic leading to easier and/or greater success with weight loss.

There are multiple possible time frame variances among these protocols, including:
a) limiting eating to the same 8-hours daily,
b) an alternating pattern of under- and over-eating days,
c) having two fasting days per week and eating normally the other 5 days,
d) having regular splurge days (in the middle of stretches of calorie restriction), and on and on.

Some authors even suggest you can splurge and eat as much as you want of whatever you want, on the non-fasting days and still lose weight. That’s the kind of promise that causes diet books to fly off shelves!

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Pick Your Approach to Weight Loss Carefully...

It's January, and many of you are thinking about losing weight, and you want some kind of plan to follow... but what? And how can you weed out scams and shams from the programs that can successfully guide you to your goals? Read on to learn how to spot a sham diet.

While a sham diet will likely deliver on some early weight loss it won’t be because of the reasons claimed in the diets’ marketing literature or book cover. The real disservice to you however is the misinformation that you’re fed that actually ends up being an impediment to any long-term success with weight control.

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