Fad diets: Why a balance of diet and exercise is a better option

Figure 1: A mock fad diet showing how drastic the
 diet restrictions and reductions truly can be

Imagine a diet offering a loss of 10, even 20 pounds in a single week. No need to cram a bunch of workout sessions into your busy life. Just change and restrict what you eat and drink in a day and you’ll see incredible results within the first week. Sike, this is what we call a fad diet. It’s not as magical as it seems. In fact, these types of diets are often quite unhealthy, seeing as you're restricting your meals to certain low calorie foods that your body won't get the necessary nutrients from (Figure 1). The weight that you do end up losing will not be permanent.

Figure 2: An example of losing water weight
 and then gaining it and more back later

Fad diets are diets often worse for your body than they are good. They involve food restrictions
and reductions that make your consumption of food inadequate to your body's needs. The
diets promise quick weight loss due to your body burning fat when its out of a quick energy
source from your consumed low energy foods. This is how a proper diet would work, however
the reality with fad diets is that you're actually just losing water weight. Eating carbohydrates
provides our body with an energy source like glucose. When our body has too much glucose,
it will turn the monosaccharides into glycogen polysaccharides through a condensation
reaction for storage in the liver and muscles. When the body is short on quick energy, it
will go back to the stored away glycogen and break it down with a hydrolysis reaction so that
it can be used. Water weight has to do with glycogen stores. For each gram of glycogen,
3-4 grams of water are involved, adding up to quite a few pounds. To rid your body of this
water weight, fad diets make you eat low calorie, forcing your body to use up glycogen it
has stored away, which in turn lets the water it was with run free and exit the body. This is
how fad diets cause weight loss. Odds are, once you begin eating normally again, glycogen
will build back up and your water weight will return, rendering the diet unsuccessful. This is
shown in figure 2.

Figure 3: The 7 day meal plan for the cabbage soup diet

The cabbage soup diet is based around, you guessed it, cabbage soup. For a week, you eat a low calorie cabbage soup for every meal along with small amounts of skim milk, fresh fruit and vegetables. The exact meal plan is shown in figure 3. This diet goes a step further than other fad diets. Not only is it so low calorie that it digs into the body's glycogen stores, but the cabbage soup is so low calorie that your body burns more calories digesting the cabbage than it actually contains. The diet is said to originate from a hospital where it was used to lower the weight of heart patients before surgery. It may be beneficial to do before an event to slim down but it does come with some side effects. Side effects include the obvious hunger due to low calorie consumption, fatigue from lack of energy, gas from the cabbage (ewwww), excessive urination from all the liquid soup being eaten, and moodiness from the nutrients your body lacks.

Figure 4: Cabbage soup, a blend of vegetables and vegetable stock

To make the soup, you boil all the chopped up ingredients together. It is shown in figure 4.

2 large onions
2 green peppers
2 cans of tomatoes
1 bunch of celery
1 head of cabbage
3 carrots
1 package of mushrooms
1–2 bouillon cubes (optional)
6–8 cups water or vegetable cocktail such as V8

Figure 5: The percentage of essential amino acids in asparagus. Asparagus contains
 all of  the amino acids that the human body is unable to synthesize

Eating only fruits, vegetables and a low calorie soup for a week seems like it would be clean and healthy at first glance, but once you truly look into it, it's evident that there are not enough macronutrients to sustain a human body. The fruits and vegetables suggested by the diet are all low in lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, which are the main sources of energy and nutrients. Vegetables like corn, peas, potatoes and asparagus are all quite high in protein and carbs, some of which having all of the essential amino acids, amino acids unable to be synthesized by the human body. Asparagus amino acid content shown in figure 5. Turns out that these are the vegetables that are NOT supposed to be eaten on the diet specifically because of their high amounts of lipids, carbs and proteins. It's like you're tricking your body into thinking you're just eating really healthy when in reality you're starving yourself and pushing through the side effects that come with it.

In order to truly understand the diet and the side effects that come with it, I decided to try it
out for myself. I followed the meal plan exactly, well, almost. Rather than a cabbage soup,
my mom whipped up a vegetable soup variation. I followed the meal plan exactly until the
afternoon of day 2, when I stood up from my dining room table after completing some
homework and felt dizzy. I figured I should probably eat something that would be healthy
and still feed my body properly so I made some eggs. I continued the diet after this to test
my body's limits. Sure enough, the side effects stated above kicked in. I was always hungry,
always peeing, often moody and just plain exhausted. This goes to show how intense the lack
of calories is and how it takes a toll on your body. A healthy balance of all macronutrients is
required by the body to do its job and allow you to function as a person.

Figure 6: A healthy balance between good food and exercise.
You must provide your body with all macro nutrients while also working
out and improving physical health

Most people balance diet and exercise in order to look and feel healthy like in figure 6.
Today's society is such a lazy one that were always looking for the easy way out. We'd
rather starve our bodies than do a little bit of exercise every once in a while. The fad diets
have a pull on us because of their fast weight loss promises without need for exercise, only
food restrictions. In reality, foods should not be restricted. A balanced diet full of foods that
you enjoy as well as foods that your body enjoys is ideal. Of course, unhealthy foods should
be eaten in moderation, but definitely not restricted. Having restrictions against certain foods
tends to make people want to eat the restricted foods even more just to go against rules.

In summary, fad diets are often too good to be true. They offer quick weight loss, which is
usually just water weight that returns once your dieting is over. The cabbage soup diet is just
like all the others with an added twist due to the fact that gesting the cabbage burns more
calories than it contains. Moderate exercise and a balanced diet with a blend of all food
groups is recommended rather than diet restrictions in order to enjoy foods you like and
that are good for you.