What are the diets for quick weight loss? Are they just fads at best or unhealthy at worse? If we want to drop pounds quickly are we being unrealistic and impatient? Can we lose weight and keep our sanity, as well as our metabolism and our lean muscle mass?

Once you have reached the point at which you realize you want to make changes and lose weight, do you find that you are hopeful of a quick solution? Have you wondered if it is just all hype — the various crash diets like Master Cleanse or the so-called Mayo Clinic diet or the Cabbage Soup Diet — that these kinds of plans produce quick weight loss? Well, in fact they can not only give you short-term and short-lived results (after days of starvation, weakness and sheer agony) but they can also be dangerous for your health.

Instead, there are plans that have worked for decades. The Kempner Rice Diet may sound like it fits into those fad diets I just mentioned, but in fact, it’s been around since 1939, created by its namesake founder Walter Kempner at Duke University. The well-researched diet has a long track record of not just producing rapid weight loss, but for those who need it a reversal of heart disease, diabetes and other chronic illnesses; optionally under medical supervision on-site in Durham, NC.

However, online there is a wealth of information at the official Rice Diet Web site including the actual diet plan as well as recipes and forums. This carefully structured diet is far from a mono-food diet, as it allows for a wide selection of complex carbohydrates, as well as non-starchy vegetables and lean protein. No need to starve for days on cabbage soup or maple syrup and cayenne!

Also check out the video below for more on the diet.

Another diet with longstanding success is the McDougall diet. Like the Rice Diet, it has helped people over the years in reducing heart disease, hypertension and other major illnesses. It’s a plant-based diet, low in fat which allows for unlimited consumption of certain foods such as non-starchy vegetables, fruits within reason, and healthy complex carbohydrates — starches such as potatoes, sweet potatoes, steel cut oats, as well as legumes.

You can check out online the Free McDougall Diet Plan.

There are also support forums, including one specifically for the McDougall Maximum Weight Loss Plan (MWLP).

Yes, the diet does work, especially the MWLP, as it helped me break a two-month long weight loss plateau when I had just 10 pounds to go to reach goal weight. So it’s worth a try and it’s free. No DVDs, no books to buy.

Watch below as Dr. John McDougall talks about diet and weight loss and how we can become motivated.

OK, But What About All Those Other Diets……

Those are the healthy methods I recommend. I realize that there are still stories of success when you are in a real jam and want to drop that dress size pretty much yesterday. So let’s look at what else is out there.

Well, first of all, I can’t recommend any of the popular fad diets — including Master Cleanse a.k.a. Maple Syrup Diet a.k.a. Lemon Detox Diet a.k.a. Beyonce Diet — at least not as a permanent solution. But yes, as a jumpstart, the results you can get are undeniable.

If you are trying to diet down a dress size or two and you have the willpower and determination — and do not have any underlying health conditions (a standard disclaimer, sure, but not to be taken lightly) — you can follow the success of others. The popular diet plan was originally designed as as a detoxification and fasting program by its creator, the late Stanley Burroughs. There’s a wealth of information at the MasterCleanse.org Web site. Also, you will find a balanced critique and review here at The Lemonade Diet (Master Cleanse Diet).

YouTube Link

 

The other diet that is hot in the news is the HGC diet. Exercise caution and do your due diligence with this one as there are studies indicating possible dangers. It’s easy to see how one could lose weight quickly; it’s a 500 calorie a day diet which normally might be a challenge to follow as it would provoke extreme hunger. However, the hunger is suppressed by taking injections of a hormone, daily shots of a hormone, human chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG), normally produced by produced by pregnant women. The Doctor Oz Show took at extensive look at the diet. You can see both an article and video at the Web site: The HCG Diet: Fact vs. Fiction. One of the things they caution against is buying products on the Internet, as you will not know what you are getting — the actual hormone cannot be sold, legally, without a prescription.

More details in the video below.

YouTube Link

You would be well advised to undertake this only under medical supervision in a setting where you are given the actual HCG and your health is monitored. Of course, without the HCG injections, what you have, in essence, is an extreme low calorie diet — with willpower you could subside on 500 calories a day, but it’s questionable whether the diet is sustainable and, whether or not you’d be able to keep the weight off.

It is not a long-term solution, and it is not suitable to lose a lot of weight and keep it off. I’m assuming that if we’re putting the effort to lose the weight, we want to keep it off. We don’t want to see it again next month after the big event — vacation, wedding, class reunion, prom, etc. is over. What happens if you crash diet? Well, yes, you lose “weight” but this can very well be lean muscle mass as well as water weight. The latter is easy to replace — even a half gallon of water or other liquid will add a little more than four pounds — but it’s the lean muscle mass we really don’t want to lose. Yes, you get an initial rush from seeing the number drop on the scales, but does this translate into fitting into your dress or your skinny jeans?

So let’s look at some ways to jumpstart weight loss, as it will boost morale and help with motivation. What can we do that’s fast and not hazardous?

Get Rid of All of the Bad Stuff Now!

If you drink soda pop, that’s the first thing to cut out. Stop all processed foods, fast foods, frozen foods. Basically anything that’s got a list of ingredients that requires several college level chemistry courses to decipher. Along with getting harmful additives out of your system, you’re also getting rid of the high sodium characteristic of these foods. Rightly we rail against high fructose corn syrup, but sodium is not your friend either. Aside from causing water retention, there are long-term effects — the news on high sodium diets just get’s grimmer by the day.

A Sugar Free Life…Is a Slimmer Life

Sugar has got to go….Yes, sugar. Well, you did want quick weight loss, and you probably don’t really want to live on cabbage for the next few days. So consider the subtraction of sugar a less painful alternative that the agony of starvation. Sugar’s much in the news lately now that the New York Times published an article — Is Sugar Toxic? – on the subject, telling the mainstream what’s been widely known for years. Sugar may taste good, but that’s it. For more on the subject, you can watch a 90 minute documentary on YouTube: “Sugar: The Bitter Truth.” (Also available as a free download.) It features UCSF Professor Robert H. Lustig, MD laying out the facts on the dangers of sugar and how it has contributed to the obesity epidemic. While not a typical viral video, it has received, as I write this now, more than 1.2 million views on YouTube.

Sugar, more than just empty calories, will wreck havoc with your blood sugar and insulin levels, and it is this which contributes to weight gain. Removing this villain may not yield overnight success, but it will help you to set in motion fat loss instead of fat storage. This has been widely discussed since the mid-1990s, with the rise of Dr. Barry Sears’ Zone Diet. You can learn more about what sugar as well as refined carbohydrates — white flour, white pasta, white rice etc. — as well as a new culprit — omega 6 fatty acids — have to do with weight gain; find out more about Toxic Fat and silent inflammation and what has happened to our food supply — all of this has created the perfect circumstances for explosive weight gain.

nutrition facts

Bad Guys Gone…Now What?

So it makes sense to eliminate what’s causing the weight gain as a point of departure. This can be the start not just of quick weight loss, but importantly, permanent weight loss. If you are committed to making substantial changes in how you eat, you can achieve long-lasting results with any of these popular diets which are quite sound. These diets all allow you to consume healthy foods in sufficient quantities to curb hunger and to set you on a path of transforming for good. Check out the Web sites for free information and more details.

We know the challenge is not just to drop pounds fast, but the long-term view is just as important. Just think of how fabulous when you look great at your 10th high school reunion and your 20th as well! Not to mention those 10 years and counting of never having to fret about putting on a bikini to go to the beach. Now that’s what I call skinny bliss! It’s the satisfaction of taking the weight off — yes, even if it took a year or two — and keeping it off.