Recently, I could hardly believe it when I heard about the "Fast Food Diet"! Am I against fast food? Yes and no, meaning that I'm not against our eating fast food but I'm against recommending it as a diet to lose. In fact, let me say unconditionally, I'm personally against all the popular weight loss diets!

So, today, what I'd like to say is calories, calories, calories count first regardless of the diet we choose to lose! What does this mean? If we take in less calories than we burn over a period of time we will lose weight. It's that simple. Research backs this up. All diets in some manner restrict our caloric intake (some just disguise it better) leading to weight loss.

All nutrients including protein will be turned into stored body fat when our total calories exceed our total need. Fat and alcohol are the easiest type of calories for the body to store as fat. This is why we need to watch our fat and alcohol intake for weight loss (I'm excluding health reasons). Fat and alcohol are also more calorically dense, which means we get little quantity for a whole lot of calories. Cutting out fat and alcohol without adding lots of food can result in a large decrease in total calories.

We lose weight quickly on high protein diets because without carbohydrates in our diet , we lose lots of water weight. This can translate into a 3-7LB loss in one week depending upon our body weight. Another reason research has shown that high protein diets result in weight loss, is boredom. Yes, after weeks and months of eating just meats and high protein foods (most of us don't realize it), we start to reduce portions because we desire less and less of the very limited foods we are eating. This, combined with the fact that we are not eating the foods that we tend to overeat (bread?) leads to an overall reduced amount of food. Reduced food, reduced portions, means you guessed it, less calories hence weight loss. But how long will YOU go without carbs? Even the new fast food diet outlines how to stay within 1500 calories (no big macs for us on this!) to lose!

So, we're back to less calories eaten than burned equals weight loss, regardless of the diet. However, research does show that these popular diets do NOT lead to long weight loss maintenance.

So, perhaps we need to think of a specific way to save a few calories everyday because a few saved here and there does add up to weight loss and maintenance. "Creative Eating" perhaps (my way of course!).

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