The diet industry is a multi billion dollar industry.  As people grow fatter and fatter year after year, so does the competition for a dieter’s business.

People are naturally lazy and the diet industry uses this fact when developing their advertising campaigns.  Promoting diet plans that are simple and easy, and claim to “melt the fat away in your sleep” sells! People do not want to be told that it is going to take a lot of hard work and dedication to transform their body.  They will gladly pay for fat loss creams and pills that promise to do all of the hard work for them.  Over the years, abdominal exercise programs have shortened from 20 minutes a day, to 5 minutes a day, to 6 second abs! 

Just look at the covers of magazines at the checkout stands at the supermarket.  Every month they claim to have a new and powerful diet that is much better than the one from last month’s edition.  They generally seem to go in cycles something like this. 

Month 1 – Get Ready for the Holidays.  Lose 20 lbs by (insert holiday).
Month 2 – New Breakthrough!  Lose 12 lbs a week without hunger.
Month 3 – Jolene lost 85 lbs by doing new secret abdominal exercises.
Month 4 – Get a head start by losing 10 lbs this weekend.
Month 5 – The Star’s Bikini Season Diet Released to the Public
Month 6 – etc etc.

People actually buy these magazines month after month because of these headlines!  They will choose to buy the magazine with the most appealing diet headlines over another one. 

If these diets actually worked as they say, why would people continue to buy the magazines?  If they actually reported on a simple diet that worked for everyone, nobody would care to read about next month’s new diet.  Are they forgiving the magazine for not getting it right because maybe next month’s diet will work for them?  Or do they think that perhaps last month’s diet will only work for a certain type of dieter and next month’s diet might work for them?

It is possible to lose weight fairly fast.  Your body is made up of 70% water and it is easy to lose water weight in the short term.  Boxers do it all the time when they are trying to “weigh-in” at a certain weight before a fight.  I have seen a fighter lose 20 lbs in a 24 hour period before a weigh-in.  He severely dehydrated himself by literally trying to sweat out the water.  It was a very dangerous thing to do and it quite possibly could have killed him. 

Did he really lose 20 lbs of fat?  Hardly, he was 20 lbs heavier the next day after he re-hydrated himself before his fight.

Many of these diets that claim fast weight loss over the weekend do work, but don’t think that you are losing a significant amount of fat or that the weight loss will be permanent.  In fact, most of these diets will make you fatter in the long run.

When you lose weight fast, you lose a lot of water, muscle and fat.  If you lose 5 lbs, you may lose 3 lbs of water, one pound of muscle, and one pound of fat.  Every time that you diet and lose muscle, your metabolism slows down.  If you gain the 5 lbs back, you will regain 3 lbs of water, but this time you will regain 2 lbs of fat.  You will actually have more and more pounds of fat on you each time you diet like this.  Your metabolism slows down because you don’t have as much muscle as you used to, and the yo-yo cycle continues.

You need to use some common sense when you evaluate the claims of most advertising.  If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true. 

Most health care and fitness professionals agree that you should not lose more than 2 lbs or 1% of your body weight per week.  Your body is simply not capable of burning more fat than this without also burning up muscle tissue at the same time.  You must hold on to the muscle that you have if you are to be successful with weight loss in the long run.

Here is the bottom line.

To be successful, you need to eat a healthy diet with only a small reduction in calories and do cardiovascular exercise and resistance training.  It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and consistency.  To become fit, lean and toned, you have to change your entire lifestyle to that of an athletic and healthy person.  Over time, you will simply become that athletic and healthy person.  If you change your lifestyle to that of an overweight couch potato, over time you will become that person as well.

The problem with this simple advice is that it is not attractive to people who are looking for a quick and easy solution to their weight problem.  In short, this advice can’t compete with diets that promise quick and easy results.  The hard truth isn’t glamorous and doesn’t sell magazines, but it works.