Which diets work

What determines whether a diet works? Is it the number of pounds you lose, or is it the amount of time you take to lose a certain number of pounds, or is it whether you are able to keep the pounds off after you get off the diet?

Firstly, a diet is, well, a diet. A short term solution to weight loss. The consensus is that, if you go on a diet, you will go OFF it sooner or later. Which is why experts denounce diet fads, and instead encourage people to embark on a healthy eating regime that will last for life.

A diet which i personally tried: the Lemonade diet. Guaranteed to lose a pound everyday. Will feel healthier and more alert after 8-10 days. Will detoxify your body while you are on the diet.

Well, it fulfilled all these. So technically speaking, it IS a diet which works. I lost 12 pounds in 10 days.

And gained half of it back again in 2 days.

I believe that the reason why people fail in their diet, or rather, end up blaming the diet for failing them, is because they themselves are unable to keep to it. Or after completing the diet, they revert back to their old, probably unhealthy habits. So no matter how good a diet is, once you are off it, everything goes back to the way it had been pre diet.

However, for diets that challenge the food pyramid, such as the Atkin Diet and South Beach diet, which puts emphasis on eliminating carbohydrates from the everyday meal, I personally don’t think they work. Blaming carbohydrates for weight gain seems to me as ludicrious. After all, most of Asia, even the developed parts, have lived on rice and noodles and vegetables for the past millenia and the obesity rate is comparatively lower than Europe and America. And most don’t even have to go on any diet plans to keep that weight. Poultry and pork, which are protein rich foods and are also on the secondary level of the food chain, should not be the piece de renaissance of a meal.

Instead, why not make a change in your everyday diet?

For instance, have a bowl of porridge with a sprinkling of soy sauce or marmite for lunch everyday. It’s light on the stomach and tastes great. Who knows, you might lose more than a few pounds just by making this change!