3 Day Diet
One popular internet fad diet is called the “3-day diet“. The temporary nature of this diet lulls people into believing that it can’t really hurt them in such a short time, and this may be true, as far as general health goes. However, because this is essentially a “very low calorie diet“, it is almost guaranteed to add pounds to your butt and inches to your waistline. Before beginning this or any other low-calorie diet, you’d better go buy yourself a bigger pair of jeans.
Most website that discuss this diet give a list of foods that are allowed, and when you add up all the calories from the three different meals, it only comes to about 978 calories. This reduction in calories will put you into starvation mode almost immediately.
You’ll know your body is starving because you’ll feel cold, no matter how many sweaters you pile on. You will be lethargic, and won’t want to get out and do anything, even if you’ve planned it weeks in advance. You’ll probably dream about food, and pictures of food will dance in front of your eyes even when you’re awake. These are common symptoms of starvation, and most people who go on reduced-calorie diets will suffer from at least one of those symptoms.
Since the 3-day diet goes far beyond most prescription diets, and is close to what obesity experts consider a very low calorie diet (VLCD), the symptoms may be even more severe.
In fact, you’ll experience exactly the same symptoms if you just stop eating altogether and go on a fast, although most healthy people who go on medically-supervised water fasts get over these symptoms in two or three days, and then start feeling better.
If you stay on a starvation diet like the 3-day diet, however, the symptoms will just keep getting worse. You could even go into clinical depression, a common risk of low-calorie diets. (Both fasts and VLCDs should never be started without your doctor’s approval.)
The 3-day diet consists of grapefruit, toast, a small amount of peanut butter, very small portions of tuna and chicken, and some veggies and an apple for dinner. Oddly enough, the diet then calls for a cup of vanilla ice cream for dessert. The diet is very low in protein, and fairly high, percentage-wise, in refined carbohydrates. Fats come from the peanut butter and the ice cream.
Refined carbohydrates add fat to the body, and add little or no nutrition. By reducing the calories to starvation level but adding sugar and bread to the diet, this almost guarantees that you’ll have food cravings. This happens because you’ll get an insulin spike when you eat the carbs, and the extra insulin will sweep your bloodstream clear of glucose, or blood sugar. Most of it will end up in your fat cells, and won’t be available for other cells to use for fuel. That means you get even hungrier. And hungry people obsess about food.
When you obsess about food because your body is starving, you can only hold out against ‘cheating’ for a short amount of time. Even if you manage to stick with this diet for the full three days, it will be almost impossible to avoid bing eating as soon as the diet is over. This is a natural consequence of low-calorie diets, and is even worse with very-low-calorie diets like this one. Research studies done back in 1917 proved that the average dieter will end up 5 to 8 pounds heavier than they started within a week or two of ending the diet.
So, in this author’s opinion, the 3-day diet just isn’t a good idea, because it will make you miserable for three days, and it won’t work for permanent weight loss. If you really want to gain a few extra pounds, there are more enjoyable (and safer) ways to go about it. Since you really want to lose weight instead of gain it, find a wholesome, natural plan for slower, long-term weight loss, instead.
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Fad Diets
The truth of the matter is that a lot of these diets simply require you to cut back almost every nutritional food and eat only 1 thing, or drink a special magic blended potion in order to lose weight fast, these are popular fad diets that will hurt your body and your health.
Many people fall into these types of popular fad diets in order to miraculously lose weight because that’s what Hollywood is doing, or because that’s the latest thing hitting the Internet. There is a lot of information available that’s very helpful and do actually benefit you in losing weight quickly and safely.
I’m going to quickly go over some popular fad diets so you can quickly distinguish them and avoid them.
The Cabbage Soup Diet - This diet has been around for years promising of losing 10-15 pounds in a week. It works, however it’s only water weight which will come immediately right back after stopping the diet. I honestly wouldn’t be this every meal, every day… I knew people who couldn’t last 2 days on this.
The Blood Type Diet - This diet came out in the late 90’s with the idea that over time, dietary requirements change according to environmental factors. What this means is that depending on your blood type, you would have a different diet than someone else with another blood type. This is more of a sci-fi type movie than a diet.
The Popcorn Diet - There are some good points in popcorn, however having a diet consist of only popcorn is not healthy at all. One cannot eat popcorn alone all day, it’s very bland and not tasty. You will want to add salt, butter, etc.. Too much corn within popcorn blocks the absorption of Vitamin B which may lead to skin rashes, depression, anemia, memory loss and low energy levels.
The Grapefruit Diet - This is one of the most dangerous popular fad diets available because of the potentially harmful health risk factors. Nobody has achieve any type of success with this, especially long-term. The juice in grapefruit enhances the fat burning process, which is good! However what this diet will do is have you drink grapefruit every single and you will be eating an extremely low amount of calories throughout the day - not healthy at all.
One Good Meal Diet - This popular fad diet is pretty much self explanatory. It let’s you eat one good meal per week. The rest of the time you will be drinking mainly coffee, or having an egg, maybe some toast… not much else.
The Chocolate Diet - Chocolate has been known to be beneficial to your health. What this diet will do is act as a replacement for almost everything, such as vitamin replacement and fights against heart disease, high blood pressure and replenishes necessary nutrients. This is a popular fad diet that’ll lead to disaster.
… and the list goes on and on. As you can tell, most of these “diets” want you to eat the same type of food over and over again, these are all popular fad diets.
In order to lose weight effectively you need to change your lifestyle. That means changing the types of food that you are accustomed to eating, perhaps doing a little bit of exercise, changing the “way” you eat, and even going as far as changing the people you associate with - believe it or not that has an effect on your eating habits.
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Diabetic Diet
Diabetic individuals suffer a condition where the body fails to effectively use or simply ceases to produce insulin to regulate the amount of sugar in the blood. A healthy body automatically regulates glucose level in the blood, adjusting to any type of food consumed. Diabetics, on the other hand, need to balance their food intake with insulin injections, exercise and other glucose altering activity to control blood glucose level while maintaining a desirable weight, and prevent a host of heart-related diseases. To keep blood glucose from rising too high or dipping too low, an event that may lead to diabetic shock, a healthy diet is vital for all diabetics. It is simply a balanced healthy diet, though a common misconception is that the diet consist only diabetic foods.
Research shows that regardless of the makeup of the diet, the most effective dietary strategy to prevent the onset of diabetic is by eating just enough calories to maintain an ideal weight. Recommendations of diabetic diet differ from one person to another, based on lifestyle, nutritional needs, and the timing and action of medications. In any case, adjusting the diet to suit a particular condition requires patients to learn the basics of food nutrition.
The diet for Type 1 diabetes patients focuses mostly on matching required insulin shots with food intake. As such, Type 1 patients need to know how fast their body metabolizes different type of foods and when the insulin peaks. A recommended diet for patients with Type 1 diabetes contains approximately 35 calories per kg of body weight per day, or 16 calories per pound of body weight per day.
Meanwhile, diet for Type 2 diabetes is targeted to improve the body’s ability to utilize produced insulin through weight loss. Patients with Type 2 diabetes generally are put on a 1500-1800 calorie diet per day. This, however, varies depending on a person’s age, sex, activity level, current weight and body style. It takes more calories to maintain a larger body, thus a 1600 calorie diet for more obese individuals may promote weight loss that is too fast to be healthy. In general, men require more calories than women owing to their higher muscle mass; more calories are burned by muscles than fat. Similarly, people with low activity level will have less daily caloric needs.
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