4 Weird Diets that Actually Work

You may be trying to lose weight to be able to fully enjoy the hot season. Or perhaps you're looking for an easy, yet effective way of shedding some unwanted pounds.

If you've already tried many diets and are willing to go for something new, yet possibly a bit strange, here are some weird diets that work. Most of them are simply weird fad diets that help you lose weight on the short term.

Weird Diets that Work: Bacteria Diet

It might sound creepy at first (and not at all appetizing), but the bacteria diet actually includes some tasty foods! This strange weight loss regimen is based on one simple principle: the consumption of foods that help you increase the number of healthy bacteria in your gut.

This means that you might want to start splurging on probiotic foods, like yoghurt, sauerkraut and kimchi that help you achieve just that! A higher number of good bacteria in your digestive tract translates into a better working,?increased?metabolism and a normal appetite, leading to weight loss.

Inexpensive Diets that Work: Cabbage Soup Diet

If you want to shed around 10 pounds in a week, go for the cabbage soup diet! It's definitely a fad weight loss regimen, but it will help you fit in that gorgeous dress you're dying to wear!

Drink as much cabbage soup as you can for no more than a week, while also eating fruits and veggies. During the first three days, though, remember to avoid bananas. Last but not least, avoid at all costs alcohol and sweetened beverages.

Weird Ways to Lose Weight: One Day Diet

Those final two pounds seem to be stuck on your body. Or maybe the big day is tomorrow and you still want to get rid of some more unwanted pounds. Whatever the case, the one day diet might be what you're looking for!

Here's the menu for your one day diet that helps you shed two pounds. Your breakfast should consist of 1 boiled egg, 1 cup of black coffee and half a grapefruit. Snack on 2 wholewheat crackers and 1 cup of black coffee. For lunch, go for a tasty combo of 3 half celery stalks, 1 can of tuna fish and 1 cup of black coffee. Last but not least, for dinner you may have 3 ounces of baked skinless chicken and 7 cauliflower florets.

Weird Fad Diets: Lemonade Diet

A delicious fad weight loss regimen, the lemonade diet may be followed for 7 to 10 days and helps you cleanse your body. The main rule is drinking unsweetened lemonade at least 6 times a day. Also, remember that solid foods are forbidden.

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Photos: Thinkstock

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Why Diets Don't Work

Diets give a short term solution, but there are many reasons why diets don't fix the problem in the long run. Discover the most common reasons why diets fail.

According to scientific research, about 95% of dieters regain all the weight they lost in 1 to 5 years. The reasons why diets don't work are easy to spot and they can affect you whether you want it or not. Discover the reasons why diets fail and find out how you can lose weight without dieting.

Reasons Why Diets Fail: They're Temporary Solutions

Most people see diets simply as a short term fix for problems that actually stem from their entire lifestyle. One of the main reasons why diets don't work is that they don't offer healthy diet tips for long-term weight loss . Slowly changing the way you eat, with smaller portions, more meals throughout the day and healthier foods does much more in the long run.

Why Diets Don't Work: Restrictions Lead to Binging

Dieters want results fast and the most attractive diets are the ones that include serious restrictions. Once you experience hunger and frustration, you're more likely to give in to the all or nothing mentality or simply binge in moments of natural weakness.

Reasons Why Diets Fail: Low Energy Levels

Serious calorie restrictions lead to low energy levels and that's perhaps the most important reason why diets don't work. If you feel worse, more tired and frustrated when you diet, you're less likely to follow the plan.

Why Diets Don't Work: They Affect Muscle Mass

Men are more careful about their muscle mass when they diet, but women don't always place the same importance on maintaining it. Once muscle mass starts to decrease, the metabolic rate drops and you see less and less results when you diet without eating the right protein and working out.

Reasons Why Diets Fail: Metabolism Slows Down

After your metabolism slows down, usually after just a few days or a week of severe dieting, the weight loss rate goes too. Even if you're making sure you preserve muscle mass, your metabolism inevitably slows down when it's getting less than it needs, so the longer you stay on the same diet, the less weight you'll lose.

What to Do Instead of Dieting?

Crash diets are the worst way to lose weight and doing it naturally takes only a little more patience if you don't have any health issues that prevent you from losing weight. Start by substituting snacks with healthier alternatives and start exercising, even if that only means walking 15 to 30 minutes every day. Once you lose the first few pounds, you'll feel more motivated to work out more and eat healthier.

See also:

Food Combinations to Lose Weight

How to Eat Less - Portion Control Tips

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Yogurt lovers have better diets

Jan. 24, 2013 at 5:59 PM ET

By Cari Nierenberg

MyHealthNewsDaily

People who like yogurt may be enjoying more than its taste and texture. They also may be enjoying a better-balanced diet and getting more key nutrients than people who never eat the cultured dairy product, ?new research shows.

As a group, people who said they ate yogurt also reported consuming higher amounts of other good-for-you foods, such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, fish and whole grains, than did people who didn't eat yogurt. And their diets obtained fewer calories from processed meats, refined grains and beer than did the diets of non-yogurt eaters, according to the study, which received some funding from a yogurt manufacturer.

The peer-reviewed findings are available online in the journal Nutrition Research.

"Yogurt is a very good source of many shortfall nutrients – calcium, potassium, and magnesium – that Americans don't currently consume enough of," said study author Paul Jacques of ?Tufts University.? "Yogurt is a good way to meet your dietary requirements for nutrients that you may not be currently eating."

Jacques is director of the nutrition epidemiology laboratory at the university's Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging.

For this observational study, researchers analyzed data collected from slightly more than 6,500 adults, ages 19 to 89, all of them either the children or grandchildren of the original participants in the Framingham Heart Study. That Massachusetts-based study, which began in 1948 and followed its subjects for nearly 50 years, attempted to identify common causes of heart attack and stroke in a large group of people who had not yet developed these problems.

All the men and women in the yogurt study filled out a 126-item questionnaire, indicating how frequently they had eaten certain foods during the previous year.?

Boosting shortfall nutrients

People participating in the study were asked to recall how often they ate a one-cup serving of yogurt. Their response was based on a 9-point scale, which ranged from a low of "never or less than one serving a month" to a high of "more than six servings a day."

Researchers found that 53.8 percent of the participants ate yogurt. (Among the women, 64 percent were yogurt-eaters; among the men, 41 percent were.) The average amount of yogurt eaten was two and one-quarter cups a week. Yogurt accounted for between 1 percent and 6 percent of daily calories depending upon how much people ate.

In addition to having a better-quality diet, the men and women who regularly spooned in some yogurt had higher potassium intakes. They also were 48 percent less likely to have inadequate levels of calcium; 38 percent less likely to be deficient in magnesium; and 55 percent less apt to have shortfalls of vitamin B12, a nutrient lacking in some older people's diets.?

"We found that yogurt consumers had higher intakes of just about every nutrient we measured," Jacques said. "If people substitute yogurt for less healthy foods in the diet, it may help eliminate the inadequate intake of shortfall nutrients."

A milk alternative

The data were collected between 1998 and 2005, before the Greek yogurt boom hit the U.S.? Even now, however, levels of yogurt consumption in the U.S. lag behind those seen in some European countries and parts of the Middle East.

In fact, very few American adults meet the overall dietary guideline for dairy products, which calls for three servings a day of milk and other low-fat dairy products. One serving is considered one cup of cow's milk, soy milk or yogurt; one and a half ounces of a hard cheese like Swiss or cheddar; or two cups of cottage cheese, for example.

A one-cup serving of low-fat yogurt has a similar nutrition profile to that of a cup of low-fat milk but with roughly 50 percent more potassium, calcium, and magnesium, the researchers pointed out.

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Forget diets: Cutting fat keeps you slim

A review of 33 trials involving 73,589 men, women and children in America, Europe and New Zealand found that choosing low fat foods helped people lose around 3.5 pounds, slim their waist-lines and cut bad cholesterol - all without dieting.

Researchers who led the study said its results prove for the first time that people can lose weight without trying to.

"The weight reduction..when people ate less fat was remarkably consistent - we saw it in almost every trial. Those who cut down more on fat lost more weight," said Lee Hooper from the University of East Anglia medical school, who led the work.

"The effect isn't dramatic, like going on a diet," she said, adding that the research specifically looked at people who were cutting down on fat, but didn't aim to lose weight - so were continuing to consume a normal amount of food.

"What surprised us was that they did lose weight, their BMI (body mass index) decreased and their waists became slimmer," Hooper said. The lower fat eaters also kept their weight down over at least seven years.

The review - commissioned by the WHO's Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group (NUGAG) after a request to update their guidelines on fat intake - will now form a crucial part of global recommendations, the researchers said.

Being overweight or obese increases the risk of many illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and stroke. Together, strokes, heart attacks and other cardiovascular diseases are the biggest killers worldwide and claim more than 17 million lives a year, according to the WHO.

More than half of Europeans are obese or overweight, and in America more than 35 percent of adults and almost 17 percent of children qualify as obese.

People are defined as overweight if their body mass index or BMI - a ratio of weight to height - is more than 25 kg per metre squared (kg/m2) and obese if it is more than 30 kg/m2.

Among the 73,500 people taking part in the studies analysed by Hooper's team, there were varying ages and states of health. The researchers compared those eating less fat than usual and those eating their usual amount of fat, and measured the effect on weight and waistline after at least six months.

The results, published in the British Medical Journal, showed that eating less fat reduces body weight by 1.6 kg, cuts BMI by 0.56 kg/m2 and reduces waist circumference by 0.5 cm.

Hooper's team found that reductions in total fat intake were also linked with small but statistically significant reductions in cholesterol and blood pressure, suggesting a lower fat diet could have a beneficial effect on this heart risk factors.

Carolyn Summerbell of Durham University, who co-led the research, said the trick to slimming down and staying that way was to find a way to eat what you can stick to for life.

"Cutting down on fat will help," she said, adding that this meant opting for low-fat yoghurts, skimmed milk and reducing intake of butter, cheese and fatty snacks like crisps and cakes.

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Detrimental Effects In The Brain Of High-Fat Diets May Be Stalled By Fish Oil

Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Also Included In: Neurology / Neuroscience;??Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness
Article Date: 15 May 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Detrimental Effects In The Brain Of High-Fat Diets May Be Stalled By Fish Oil

Data from more than 180 research papers suggests fish oils could minimise the effects that junk food can have on the brain, a review by researchers at the University of Liverpool has shown.

The team at the University's Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease reviewed research from around the world to see whether there was sufficient data available to suggest that omega-3s had a role to play in aiding weight loss.

Research over the past 10 years has indicated that high-fat diets could disrupt neurogenesis, a process that generates new nerve cells, but diets rich in omega-3s could prevent these negative effects by stimulating the area of the brain that control feeding, learning and memory.

Data from 185 research papers revealed, however, that fish oils do not have a direct impact on this process in these areas of the brain, but are likely to play a significant role in stalling refined sugars and saturated fats' ability to inhibit the brain's control on the body's intake of food.

Dr Lucy Pickavance, from the University's Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease, explains: "Body weight is influenced by many factors, and some of the most important of these are the nutrients we consume. Excessive intake of certain macronutrients, the refined sugars and saturated fats found in junk food, can lead to weight gain, disrupt metabolism and even affect mental processing.

"These changes can be seen in the brain's structure, including its ability to generate new nerve cells, potentially linking obesity to neurodegenerative diseases. Research, however, has suggested that omega-3 fish oils can reverse or even prevent these effects. We wanted to investigate the literature on this topic to determine whether there is evidence to suggest that omega-3s might aid weight loss by stimulating particular brain processes."

Research papers showed that on high-fat diets hormones that are secreted from body tissues into the circulation after eating, and which normally protect neurons and stimulate their growth, are prevented from passing into the brain by increased circulation of inflammatory molecules and a type of fat called triglycerides.

Molecules that stimulate nerve growth are also reduced, but it appears, in studies with animal models, that omega-3s restore normal function by interfering with the production of these inflammatory molecules, suppressing triglycerides, and returning these nerve growth factors to normal.

Dr Pickavance added: "Fish oils don't appear to have a direct impact on weight loss, but they may take the brakes off the detrimental effects of some of the processes triggered in the brain by high-fat diets. They seem to mimic the effects of calorie restrictive diets and including more oily fish or fish oil supplements in our diets could certainly be a positive step forward for those wanting to improve their general health."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our nutrition / diet section for the latest news on this subject. The research is published in the British Journal of Nutrition. Dr Pickavance will also be discussing the effects of high-fat diets on meal patterns and the impacts of high-saturated fats on muscle composition at the 20th European Congress on Obesity at the Liverpool Arena and Convention Centre later this month.
Dr Pickavance will exhibit her work on obesity at Liverpool World Museum for members of the public on the 8 June, as part of the University's Institute of Ageing and Chronic Disease 'Meet the Scientist' event.
The journal article can be accessed here: http://journals.cambridge.org/repo_A89XItu0
University of Liverpool Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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posted by Belmarra Health Nutritionals on 16 May 2013 at 10:28 pm

There are various advantages of the fish oil. This research tells that it minimizes the effects on brain due to a junk food.

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Higher Protein Diets Help Weight Loss, Women Find

Editor's Choice
Main Category: Nutrition / Diet
Also Included In: Obesity / Weight Loss / Fitness;??Women's Health / Gynecology
Article Date: 26 Apr 2013 - 10:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Higher Protein Diets Help Weight Loss, Women Find

Most of us have either done the South Beach Diet, Zone Diet or Atkins, or have known somebody who has tried a high protein diet. According to the International Food Council Foundation, a high percentage of women who eat more protein do not only avoid weight gain, but also report weight loss.

The International Food Information Council Foundation says that approximately half of all consumers are interested in increasing their dietary protein intake - 37% are convinced that they can lose weight more easily with a high protein diet.

Researchers from the University of Minnesota and Northwestern Health Sciences University wrote about a new study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior (May/June 2013 issue).

Senior author, Noel Aldrich Ph.D., and team surveyed a nationally-representative sample of 1,824 women aged from 40 to 60 years. They had set out to describe perceptions about protein sources and requirements, find out how often mid-life women reported using the "eating more protein" practice to maintain their body weight, and compare "reported protein intake to reported frequency of using the 'eating more protein' practice to prevent weight gain".

Most of the women surveyed were able to correctly identify good sources of protein, as well as indicate what percentage of their dietary energy should come from protein.

Over half of all the obese women and 43% of the women overall in the study ate more protein to prevent weight gain.

Dr. Aldrich added that the participants who said they lost weight with "eating more protein" had a dietary protein intake similar to what is recommended by the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee.

Aldrich said:

"Education regarding dietary protein requirements may enhance the use of this practice. Women may need more information regarding protein energy content and effective selection of protein sources to enhance protein intake as a weight management strategy.

Given that the majority of Americans are overweight, identifying the most effective practices and related factors surrounding successful weight loss and prevention of weight gain are important."

Tofu. Many high protein foods can come from plants. There is a wide choice

Rather than focusing on diet first and then exercise, something many weight-loss programs promote, you should do both at the same time for best effects, according to a study carried out by a team form Stanford University School of Medicine, California, USA.

Professor Abby King and team, who wrote about their research in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, explained that it is particularly useful to start diet and exercise simultaneously if you want to lose weight properly.

If you really can only start with one, King added, you should consider doing the physical activity first.

Written by Christian Nordqvist
Copyright: Medical News Today
Not to be reproduced without permission of Medical News Today

Visit our nutrition / diet section for the latest news on this subject. “Perceived Importance of Dietary Protein to Prevent Weight Gain: A National Survey among Midlife Women”
Noel D. Aldrich, PhD; Courtney Perry, MS, RD, PhD; William Thomas, PhD; Susan K. Raatz, PhD, RD; Marla Reicks, PhD, RD.
Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior Volume 45, Issue 3 , Pages 213-221, May 2013. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

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Nordqvist, Christian. "Higher Protein Diets Help Weight Loss, Women Find." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 26 Apr. 2013. Web.
6 May. 2013. APA

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posted by Sonali Gupta on 28 Apr 2013 at 4:28 am

Many times my blog readers have asked me whether to include protein as a weight loss diet and I have always nodded strongly to have it during the course of weight loss. :)

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