Trendy Diets: What to Know Before Picking a Weight-Loss Plan

According to Sonia Angel, MS, RDN, a certified diabetes care and education specialist at Memorial Healthcare System, following a trendy weight-loss approach can help you drop some pounds. But they aren’t a problem-free solution. Consequently, make sure you understand the short-term and long-term impacts before jumping in feet first.

“People are in instant-satisfaction mode. Everyone wants a quick weight-loss fix,” she says. “Most people don’t want to work on getting their weight-loss results. They want something fast. But everyone needs to know the realities behind these diets.”

So, let’s look at two of the most common.

Intermittent fasting is a simple concept — you limit eating to certain times of day to reduce the number of calories you consume in 24 hours. For example, you could skip breakfast and only grab a light lunch and early dinner.

Angel says the most popular strategy is the 16-hour fast, where you only eat between noon and 6 pm.

“It’s a very narrow window for when you can eat,” she says. “People who try this do reduce the total number of calories they’re eating, so they’re going to lose weight. But because of the restrictive time frames, it can be difficult to sustain.”

If you want to try intermittent fasting, Angel advises you to keep these three things in mind:

1. You must still make healthy food choices.
Missing breakfast isn’t a free pass to eat burgers, fries, or pizza for your other meals.

2. Stick with your fasting schedule every day.
The schedule limits your production of insulin to help control your appetite. Taking a break on the weekend confuses your body and triggers more insulin production and makes you hungrier. You risk getting caught in a loop that can sabotage your weight-loss efforts.

3. Do you have diabetes and take medication to control your blood sugar?
Approach intermittent fasting with caution. Fasting lowers your blood sugar, increasing your chances of fainting or having a seizure.

Even if you haven’t heard of the keto diet, you probably remember the Atkins or South Beach diets. All these trends involve strictly limiting the amount of carbohydrates you eat.

Your body converts carbohydrates into sugar as its main energy source. The ketogenic diet (or Keto for short), involves consuming a very low amount of carbohydrates and replacing them with fat to help your body burn fat for energy.

So, on the one hand, if you have diabetes, the keto diet can help you lower your blood sugar and lose weight. As a result, your body burns fat, but also produces Ketones, which are acids that may be toxic to your body.

Eating fewer carbohydrates forces your body into ketosis, a state where it burns fat and produces a chemical called ketones for fuel. This can be life-threatening for someone with this chronic condition.

In addition to being highly restrictive, Angel says low-carbohydrate diets can present additional problems:

• Water weight gain: Reintroducing carbohydrates can produce a sudden insulin rush, kickstarting cravings for carbohydrate-heavy foods. Your body also stores carbohydrates alongside water molecules, so you’ll gain water weight.
• Poor digestion: Reducing carbohydrates limits your fiber intake, leading to constipation and other gastrointestinal problems.
• High cholesterol: Many people mistakenly believe they can eat as many low-carbohydrate foods as they want, including foods high in animal fat, like bacon. As a result, they end up with high cholesterol.
• Missing nutrients: Low-carbohydrate diets also raise your long-term risk for nutritional deficiencies, particularly low levels of B-complex vitamins.