Miracle Diet? Fat Chance!
So you think you know how to eat right—what foods are healthy, what foods keep the weight off—yet you can't avoid peeking at the latest fad diet. A voice inside says you'd lose the weight without cutting calories if you ate your cheeseburger without the bun, drank a liquid protein concoction, and stopped eating for three hours before you go to bed, or ate exactly 40 percent of calories from carbohydrates, 30 percent from protein, and 30 percent from fat at each meal and snack.
Sound crazy? Sure it does. Yet at any given time, about two-thirds of us are trying to lose weight or keep it off. That helps make weight loss a $43-billion-a-year industry.
1. The only permanent way to lose weight is to:
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All these steps help: Low-fat diets, for instance, can cut your risk for heart disease and other ills. Still, experts say, it's not the makeup of the diet that determines whether you lose weight, it's how many calories you consume and how many you burn. Calorie-burning exercise is vital, but it won't work alone. If a 120-pound woman walks briskly for an hour, she burns about 200 calories, but you must shed 500 calories a day to lose a pound a week.
2. If you want to lose weight, the worst time to eat is:
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If you eat the same dinner at 6 p.m. or 10 p.m., it won't matter weight-wise. But emotional eating (such as downing a bag of cookies while depressed) often occurs at night. You'll also feel more satisfied and energetic if you eat during the day.
3. The high-protein/low-carbohydrate fad diets work because:
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This diet, really a low-calorie diet in disguise, has been around for a century, going in and out of popularity. A high-protein diet burns no more fat than a healthier, low-calorie diet. Carbohydrates aren't more fattening than protein: Both have 4 calories per gram, while fat has 9 calories per gram. And despite diet claims, there's no proof that eating carbs makes you store more fat-—it's excess food of any kind that packs on weight. Do these diets keep you from feeling deprived? Experts say yes, because they let you eat foods you thought were taboo, like butter and cheese. Eventually, they create boredom by limiting choices. They can leave you exhausted, nauseated, and constipated.
4. If you want to lose weight, what would be the most filling, lasting snack? (Standard serving sizes are shown.)
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Although high-fat food like ice cream tastes great, you can get 230 calories in half a cup. It goes down fast and has low "satiety," meaning you get hungry again quickly. Two carrots (about 70 calories) make up a bulky, high-fiber snack that fills the stomach in a lasting way by raising blood sugar slowly. An ounce of pretzels offers little bulky fiber and raises blood sugar too quickly. The orange juice (100 calories) is a setup for dieters: People tend not to substitute drink calories for food calories, because fullness doesn't last. A tablespoon of peanut butter offers a high-satisfaction protein, but little to chew on. Add it to low-cal celery sticks for a filling combination.
5. Dieters have traditionally avoided fat because:
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Still, some fat is good for you. You need polyunsaturated fats for certain body functions, and omega-3 fats in fish and monounsaturated fats in the so-called Mediterranean diet are heart-healthy. Only saturated fat, common in dairy products and red meat, is labeled bad. Although fat doesn't burn as efficiently as carbohydrates during exercise (it takes more oxygen to burn fat), that really doesn't matter. Your workout burns both so long as you exercise at an intensity that leaves you able to breathe comfortably.
6. A diet is a fad if you notice:
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Fad diets fail, experts say, because they don't teach you how to manage weight for the long term. When you realize you can't stick to a fad diet, you probably will go back to eating the way you did before. The National Weight Control Registry, a record of people who lost 30-plus pounds and kept it off more than a year, offers clues to what really works:
- Lose weight for yourself.
- Exercise more (at least two hours a week).
- Eat less fat.
- Cut your total calories even if you trim as few as 100 calories per day.
- Drop pounds slowly (one to two pounds per week).
- Get support from friends or groups.
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