Avoid Risky Diets - Maintaining a Healthy Weight

Avoid Risky Diets - Maintaining a Healthy Weight

Some fad diets have had on-again, off-again popularity but are very detrimental
over the long run. For example, low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets
eliminate bread, pasta, beans, rice, starchy vegetables, and other carbohydraterich
foods and focus instead on high consumption of meat and eggs. There
are several things wrong with such diets.

First, controlled tests show that, over the long run, these diets cause no
more weight loss than that associated with old-fashioned low-calorie diets
or with nutritious low-fat vegan diets.

Second, when people lose weight with high-protein diets, it is simply
because they are eliminating so many other foods that their overall calorie
intake drops. If overall calorie intake doesn’t drop, they don’t lose weight.
Third, and most important, high-protein diets are linked to significant
health problems.

Researchers have found that people on these diets lose large amounts
of calcium in their urine, and the loss is caused by the massive amounts of
protein they are consuming.8 Animal protein tends to leach calcium from
the bones and send it through the kidneys into the urine. Over the long run,
that can lead to osteoporosis.

As we saw, meaty diets are linked to higher risk of colon
cancer.9,10 And high-fat diets in general are linked to poorer survival in
individuals diagnosed with cancer.

For individuals battling serious illness—and for anyone else—it is a very
good idea to lose excess weight, and it is important to do so in as healthful a
way as possible.