The tyranny of diets

Striving to maintain your ideal weight is a key to good health, but also seems to play a determining role in how others see you. Is that why each year, at the first signs of spring, slimming diets start sprouting everywhere? We take a critical look at some of the diets around. 

Regulating one’s food intake with the aim to lose weight has become a common practice and rare are those who manage to escape it. The preoccupation with slimness is closely related to the media hype around thin bodies that have become the ideal.

To achieve this, there is a host of methods to choose from:

• Low-calorie diets

The idea is simple: reduce calorie intake to force the body to reach into its reserves.

Whether rich in “fibres”, or simply “low in calories”, these diets demand discipline and tenacity. The so-called “fat-burning” soup variation developed in an American hospital is aimed at letting obese people lose weight rapidly before an operation. Though the structured aspect of this diet is appealing, the concept nevertheless remains off-putting. It is also more suitable for people who are fairly inactive. The Weight Watchers method originated in 1963 in the United States and is based on low-calorie meals combined with group meetings and ongoing supervision. The proof of this coaching approach is in the pudding so to speak, as it allows people to change the way they eat. But to achieve results, it is important to adhere to the group spirit and accept to be monitored.

• Meal replacements

Whether they are high-protein formulas that give a feeling of satiety due to protein ingestion, or meal replacements based on the low-calorie principle, these allow you to check your energy intake. These diets are however expensive and soon become tiresome.

• Elimination diets

Nutritionists are not fond of the elimination approach: be it the famous Atkins diet that excludes carbohydrates in favour of protein and fats, the

Blood Type Diet (where your blood type determines what you should eat), the Hollywood Diet that consists of eating just fruit for a week, or the Low Carb method.

The Mayo Clinic Diet strictly monitors daily calorie intake, while the Miami or South Beach Diet cuts out carbohydrates in favour of lots of fatty food and protein (meat, fish...).

Elimination diets are hard to keep up in the long run, and can cause deficiencies that lead to health problems.

• Food combining approaches

Chrononutrition, based on biorhythm, spreads food intake out over various times of the day and specifies what may be eaten at specific times.

Antoine food combining diet – only one type of food per day, and as much water as you want except at meal times (never at table), or the Montignac diet that bans food with a high glycemic index.

• “Detox and balance” diets

The aim here is to purify the system through different means: “acid alkaline cleansing”, food combining… such methods are complicated and scientifically unfounded.

The “medium fat” or Mediterranean diet encourages the eating of fruit and vegetables, vegetable fat, fish and whole grains, together with physical exercise. Like the Okinawa diet, it advocates a certain lifestyle, without restrictions but characterised by moderation and optimism.

 

• “Specialist” diets

Dr Cohen, Dukan, Dr Fricker, Valérie Orsoni, Zermati… to each his method, and often at a handsome profit. Less frustrating but quite expensive, they tend to include complicated recipes but are often based on gradual weight loss. It is the stabilisation phase that determines the success of a diet in the long term. Often, people regain weight as soon as they stop their diet.

 But succeeding in losing weight or maintaining your desired weight depends less on the method you use (dieting, medication, slimming products...) than the ability or possibility to modify your lifestyle in the long term.

And that is what makes it so difficult to lose weight or maintain an ideal weight! To lose weight in a lasting way, it is necessary to change habits and get more exercise.

To find out more, read the monograph published by the Louis Bonduelle Foundation, which gives an overview of the most popular as well as the most mediatised diets.