Diet This, Diet That

There’s too many diets. Way too many.

Take a look for yourself:

1. 100-Mile Diet control
2. Abs Diet
3. Alkaline diet
4. Atkins diet
5. Best Bet Diet
6. Blood Type diet
7. Body for Life
8. Breatharian diet
9. Buddhist diet
10. Cabbage soup diet
11. The Cambridge Diet
12. Candida control diet
13. Cretan diet
14. CRON-diet
15. Detox diet
16. Diabetic diet
17. Diet for a New America by John Robbins
18. The Diet Smart Plan
19. Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension or the DASH Diet
20. Dr. Hay diet
21. The Fat Resistance Diet
22. Feingold diet
23. Fit for Life diet
24. Flexitarian diet
25. Food combining diet
26. Fruitarian diet
27. Gerson diet
28. Gluten-free, casein-free diet
29. Glycemic Index diet
30. The Graham Diet
31. Grapefruit diet
32. Hacker’s diet
33. Halal diet
34. Hallelujah diet
35. High protein diet
36. Jenny Craig
37. Joel Fuhrman diet
38. Junk food diet
39. Kosher diet
40. KimKins Diet
41. Lacto vegetarianism
42. Living foods diet
43. Low-carbohydrate diet
44. Low-protein diet
45. Macrobiotic diet
46. Master Cleanse
47. Mediterranean diet
48. Montignac diet
49. Natural Foods Diet
50. Negative calorie diet
51. No-Grain Diet
52. Okinawa diet
53. The Optimal Diet
54. Organic food diet
55. Ornish Diet
56. Ovo-lacto vegetarian diet
57. Paleolithic diet
58. Perricone diet
59. Pescetarian diet
60. Plant-based diet
61. Pollotarian diet
62. Prison loaf
63. Pritikin diet
64. Rastafarian diet
65. Raw foodism
66. Rice Diet
67. Scarsdale Diet
68. Sex Diet
69. Shangri-La Diet
70. Slimming World diet
71. Sonoma diet
72. South Beach diet
73. Stillman diet
74. Subway diet
75. Vegan diet
76. Vegetarian diet
77. Very low calorie diet
78. Weigh Down diet
79. Weight Watchers
80. Western pattern diet
81. Zone Diet

That’s 81 different diets. And that’s just skimming the surface.

So the question is, how in the world could one possibly decide which diet is the best to follow? How could there be such great variances when it comes to nutrition? It’s simple. There’s a lot of quackery and “get-rich-quickers” out there. Each author, or should I say “dietary expert,” claims why their’s is superior to the next. Who to believe?

To give you an idea on just how easy it is for anyone to create a diet, here’s a little story. You may have heard about it on the news a while back.

Enter the Kimkins Diet:

This diet was created by a woman who went by the name of Kimmer. In essence, the diet she “created” is very low in calories, fat, carbs and fiber. Basically, it’s just a fork off of the earliest version of the Atkin’s Diet, so it makes me wonder how she didn’t get busted for copyright infringement anyway.

What’s funny is when this lady was summoned to be interviewed by the media, she refused. When nutritional experts and scientists examined the diet, they were startled. What they found was that the diet extremely hazardous for the health. Calling it the Starvation Diet or the Anorexia Diet seems much more fitting. To make matters worse, she had no credentials either- she was neither a nutritionist nor a healthcare professional. Experts continued to ask where her claims were coming from, but she would not speak up. I believe they even quizzed her on her understanding of basic nutrition, which she was lacking.

It wasn’t uncommon for the followers of her diet to experience extreme constipation, hair loss, chronic eating disorders, metabolic disorders, and more unsightly problems.

And to think she was charging $80 to folks that were completely oblivious of what they were getting in to!

Listen, there’s a whole host of diets out there just like this with absolutely no scientific basis. This is why I, along with many nutritional experts, personal trainers, and doctors, recommend that you drop the diet mentality altogether. These diets may bring good results at first, but in the long-run, you’ll end up worse off than before. The best way to solve the question of what’s best is to refute all but proven methods. Even our government has made this readily available. There’s a wealth of general nutrition tips and information out there that hold much truth, and more importantly, safety and effectiveness. It just takes a little research!