New diets seem to be coming out all of the time. If you are anything over 20 years old, you probably remember a few of the different diet fads that have come out.
Most of them are endorsed by a couple Hollywood stars, and seem to promise instant results practically overnight. But when we try them for ourselves, it turns out to be a whole different story.
When you see somebody promoting a new diet food plan you will often find that it's based around some special product or superfood. What you need in order to lose weight is information, not pills or superfoods.
People are spending billions of dollars on diet products. The industry is huge. A new diet (or even a new spin on an old diet) can make millions of dollars for a company producing well marketed merchandise such as meal replacements or low-whatever snacks.
To avoid falling into this kind of marketing trap, it's important to understand something about nutrition and how the body handles food.
Food is required for energy. In nature, food supplies are not usually constant.
Our ancestors didn't have access to 24 hour grocery stores selling the exact same things all the year. They had different things to eat in the different seasons. They also had more food at some times of year and less at others. Sometimes, if the harvest was bad, they might have trouble finding enough to eat for a whole year.
So if we take in more food than we need, our bodies don't just throw out the extra. They store it as fat so that we can use it later. This would help our ancestors survive the bad spells.
For the same reason, when we go on a diet there is no way that we will lose all of that fat in a very short time. The body will use it slowly, rationing it out to help us survive lean times.
We want to lose our fat as fast as possible - but our body wants to keep the fat for as long as possible!
So although it would be great to go from obese today to perfect beach body next week, we have to understand this is just not possible. Even if we eat nothing and exercise all day (NOT recommended!), the body will simply slow down the metabolism to hold on to as much fat as it can.
To lose weight successfully, we need to work with our body's metabolism, not against it.
