One of the most tiring things about initiating a diet is when the results don’t match your effort in the diet plan. While some healthy diets pay off without having you compromise on your health, others may put your health at risk and are terrible for you. Improper dieting can have many physical and mental effects. Even if a diet helps you shed weight quickly but has negative effects on your health, there’s no point. The golden rule is to choose a diet that helps you lose weight at a good pace and helps keep your health in check. With so many popular diets out there, you need to know which ones will do more harm than good. So, without further ado, let’s walk you through 5 diets that you must avoid.
Paleo Diet
The Paleo diet is based on the concept that humans are genetically mismatched with today’s diets. It, therefore, encourages people to eat like hunters and gatherers millions of years ago. This means that they must choose foods from animals, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds. It also encourages the restriction of foods that contain sugar, fructose, legumes, grains, dairy, certain oils, artificial sweeteners, and processed food.
Even though the Paleo diet has all the makings and elements of a healthy diet, it still isn’t quite recommended. The biggest problem with this diet is that it doesn’t make sense to have a one-size-fits-all approach, considering that people have historically adapted to different foods. Another major concern is that we aren’t cavemen. Our genetic blueprint, gut microbiome, and lifestyle have transformed drastically over the years, especially compared to our ancestors. Lastly, a paleo diet’s eating plan is even more restrictive than the Acid Alkaline diet, which can result in fatigue, constipation, and an upset GI.
Acid-Alkaline Diet
The alkaline ash diet or the alkaline acid diet can help you reach your goal weight, but it doesn’t include minimizing energy intake and increasing your output. It rather focuses on maintaining the ideal balance of pH levels. To keep your body from getting too ‘acidic,’ which can lead to respiratory or metabolic acidosis, you are expected to discard any sugar, meat, and processed food from your diet. Instead, you are supposed to consume more “alkaline” foods such as fruits, vegetables, legumes, seeds, nuts, and tofu. This diet not only helps reduce weight but also decreases your risk of cancer and arthritis.
While this diet sounds pretty promising overall, the main effects occur as a result of plant-based eating. The acid-alkaline lacks proper research and eliminates an entire food group (carbohydrates), a bad idea. What you need to do instead is to follow a healthy and balanced diet plan that doesn’t eliminate any food group. There aren’t any studies that have proven that any specific food can impact your body’s pH level, but it is common knowledge that consuming a balanced diet decreases chronic diseases chances.
Whole 30
Whole 30 has been advertised as a diet that can help you lose up to 35 pounds within 30 days (water weight) while gaining energy and improving your sleep. However, in reality, this diet can make you feel tired, hungry, and angry. Instead of listing foods to avoid, this diet showcases a limited amount of ‘good’ foods to be consumed. These foods include only fruits, vegetables, lean protein, and potatoes. Considering the heavy restriction of this diet, it is safe to assume that it isn’t sustainable by any means. It can start a severe binge-restrict cycle, making you feel deprived and causing some major issues such as a slowed metabolism, hormonal imbalance, and GI issues.
Ketogenic Diet
The ketogenic diet is nothing but a “fattened-up” Atkins Diet. Initially designed for epileptic patients, this diet has gained popularity and momentum due to celebrity endorsements and other perceived benefits such as fat loss and increased brain function. The keto diet allows you to eat delicious foods such as steak and bacon, making it seem like a pretty good option to enjoy delicious foods while losing weight.
However, this very high-fat diet only allows you to consume 5 to 10% of your daily calories from carbohydrates in certain forms; all other carbs are strictly off-limits. Additionally, the keto diet doesn’t focus on the quality of foods. It solely focuses on a carb ban and high-fat consumption. This means that you can make unhealthy choices such as regular consumption of bacon and butter than can raise your blood lipid levels.
Even though many people have lost insane amounts of weight through this diet, forcing your body into ketosis can end up activating your body’s starvation mode, resulting in a few adverse effects. It might end up burning muscle as fuel and can make you feel tired and fatigued. A ketone builds up in your system can also cause more problems such as dehydration, a chemical change in your blood, and kidney malfunction. While it may be a good temporary fix, keto isn’t a sustainable lifestyle, and you may also never know when your symptoms start occurring.
Juice Cleanse
When it comes to quick-fix diet options, a juice cleanse is probably the most detoxifying option of the lot. This is probably one of the worst choices you can make for your body. Even if a juice cleanse delivers on its promise, even though there’s no research to support this, any pounds you lose won’t last for too long. Instead, you are more likely to experience headaches, feel tired, have trouble concentrating, and suffer from intense hunger pangs. Even though you might feel more energetic after a few days due to the consumption of less sugary and greasy foods and improved fluid status, old habits will set back in once you start eating again.
While losing weight is a good thing, it’s more important to maintain good health. So, before jumping into something that you’ll regret later on, consider the above-listed diets that you must avoid!
