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What you can learn from four crazy diets
, 12 05th, 2008What you can learn from four crazy diets (besides what not to do)
This was on Women’s health by Megan McNamara
We all know someone who diets on the fringe: the roommate who pops caffeine pills, the coworker who eats nothing but cottage cheese for a month. Whenever she gets on her latest skinny-by-Sunday kick, we roll our eyes and laugh—until it works.
Though the insta-results of crash diets may tempt you to chuck your food journal and load up on six-packs of Breakstone’s, there’s a better way. After all, your friend isn’t just torturing her taste buds—research shows that uber-restrictive weight-loss plans can lead to fatigue, dehydration, constipation, and diarrhea. Long term, she’s raising her risk for gallstones, osteoporosis, and heart damage—not to mention upping the odds of gaining all the weight back.
You, meanwhile, can use her crash diet as a crash course in improving your own. We dissected four extreme diets (ones we’d never actually recommend trying) to find the facts behind the fads. Here’s what they can teach you about dropping pounds safely and sanely.
The Fad: Dinner for breakfast
Belly bulge is more than a nuisance when you bare it onstage twice a week. That’s what helped librarian and belly dancer Nicole Sinclair (unlike our other dieters, she didn’t want us to use her real name), 36, stomach a diet of steak for breakfast and toast for dinner. “I read that Westerners eat their meals the wrong way around, so I decided to give it a shot,” she says.
That meant pasta, casseroles, even lamb stew in the morning; a salad in the afternoon; then tea and fruit in the evening. Sinclair lost 18 pounds in a matter of months as a result. But within the year, she was back to morning toast and her original weight.
Why it worked: “Sinclair gave her body the most calories in the morning, which is when it was prepared to burn more,” says Cynthia Sass, M.P.H., R.D., author of Your Diet Is Driving Me Crazy. Most of us are pretty inactive between dinnertime and The Daily Show, so not much is getting worked off. Also, “Sinclair cut portions just by having a less leisurely meal,” says Arthur Frank, M.D., medical director of the George Washington University Weight Management Program. By eating her biggest meal before rushing off to work, she had no time (and probably no taste) for appetizers, cocktails, or dessert.
What to steal: Mix up your routine. “Sometimes a life or even a schedule change can jar you out of a rut,” Sass says. “I’ve had clients break overeating patterns thanks to a move, a new job or relationship, or getting a dog.” If you aren’t due for a major transformation, even a small change can help rewire your eating habits. Try taking a class, pursuing a hobby, or just going for a walk instead of an after-meal sugar rush.
The Fad: One container of food a day
Performers are used to being the center of attention, but when T. Lynn Mikeska, 29, an actress in Austin, Texas, agreed to bump and grind in a live burlesque show, she didn’t want that attention aimed at her spare tire. “I only had a month before I had to take it off and shake it,” she says. She knew she wouldn’t feel confident about being half naked onstage unless she shed 10 or so pounds from her middle.
But putting in a full day as an aesthetician followed by 4-hour rehearsals didn’t leave her much time to think about food—she’d just breeze through the nearest drive-thru when she got hungry. “I needed something I could tote around all day that wouldn’t spoil and was more nutritious than a box of Cheez-Its,” she says. Instead of getting her pasties in a twist, she put two handfuls of trail mix and two Slim-Fast bars in a plastic container and nibbled out of it all day. When it was empty, she was done—period. By the end of the month, she’d dropped 11 pounds—and dropped trou before a roomful of strangers. She ditched the Tupperware Diet right after her debut.
Why it worked: “Nutrition bars and trail mix are packed with protein, which takes longer to digest than carbs, so your stomach won’t growl for up to 4 hours,” Sass says. And though nuts are high in calories, they might help quash your appetite: One theory is that the combination of protein and fat keeps you sated. Plus, Frank says, “Prepackaged meals are useful because they’re portion controlled.”
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Weight loss Diets & Pills…
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