In Defense of Fad Diets

You know the routine by now. Flip the channel, open a magazine, or click a link and you’re confronted with yet another in-depth piece of journalism talking about how horrible fad diets are. “Don’t eat a diet solely of grapefruit for the rest of your life,” they wisely tell us. Um…okay. This is obvious, obvious stuff to most of us by now. They may as well start writing articles about how the sun will rise tomorrow or how the latest Harry Potter book was a best-seller. Yawn.

I think what annoys me most is the way each article is written as if were delivered from the mountaintop on a stone tablet. “Hearken unto me, ye stupid masses: Eating nothing but pickles and Sweet-Tarts for six years is bad for your health.” Yes, thank you for that helpful bit of information. That never occurred to me.

On the other hand, most of us feel a bit smug reading these gems. We feel encouraged that we, and we alone, already knew that the Cheez-It and Lemon Juice diet was a bad idea. We would certainly never buy that snake oil. We’ve learned from years and years of experience that the only way to lose weight is through eating a nutritious, balanced diet and getting plenty of exercise. (Never mind very few of us has ever actually been able to employ this concept ourselves. At least we know what we’re supposed to do.)

But what exactly are “fad diets” designed to do? Easy answer: lose weight and lose it quickly. This is, of course, what the experts immediately pounce upon. “It’s unhealthy! It hasn’t been clinically proven to work! If you follow that diet then you won’t be buying my wonder diet book!”

They’re all good points when you take it from the primary point of view of long-term viability and effectiveness. They (rightly) claim that 700 calories a day is no way to live. Or that cutting out carbohydrates for seventy years is impossible. But last I checked, I don’t believe a single one of these programs actually recommends you follow the diet for seventy years.

If a diet promises a quick fix, and you’ve struggled with everything else, then why not try it for two or three days? Unless you’re actively ingesting poison, I don’t believe two or three days of anything is going to have any long term negative impact. You may just drop a few pounds. And, sure, it’s probably all water weight. But maybe that’s exactly what you need to get your butt in gear.

The detractors of fad diets make the exact same mistake the proponents of good diets make: they focus on the math and ignore the psychology. If you’re down in the dumps and feel like nothing will ever work for you, then go ahead and grab a crazy diet for half a week and see what happens. If that drops you from 212 to 209 you might just feel something you haven’t felt for a long, long time: happy. And, holy cow, if that was just enough to drop you from 202 back into Onederland, you might just go out and buy yourself a pony.

Just one word of warning. The experts are right. Don’t do this forever. Treat it for what it is: a kickstart program and go into it with a transition plan in hand. Your three days of fad dieting is more than enough time to stock up on good foods, buy a new pair of walking shoes, and purchase that doctor’s new wonder diet book.