beauty

Is this the craziest diet ever?

I’m not going to pretend that my ears didn’t prick up a little when I heard about a new diet on the news last night. I’m also not going to pretend that I don’t have a couple of kilos that I would not miss if they got lost or you know disappeared forever.

I know that diets are not sustainable long term. I am well aware that energy in vs energy out is the way to lose weight sensibly and that I need a balanced diet. I know all that. But I still listen with eager anticipation for the “miracle diet”.  And last night's news may have delivered it to me.

The only problem is that the miracle is that the diet got published at all.  And to make matters worse it has sold over 120 000 copies

Called The OMG Diet it advocates such practices as getting into a bath of cold water once a day to “encourage your body to burn stored fat as it tries to keep warm” It will boost metabolism for up to 15 hours, says the author Venice A Fulton (Paul Khanna), as cold activates ‘good’ brown fat, burning calories to keep warm.

Fulton also recommends no more than 120grams of carbs a day which you can get from any source, so you can drink coke if broccoli doesn’t take your fancy. "It makes no difference if you get all of your carbs from cans of coke or plates of broccoli," says Fulton. The whole nutrients issue seems to have been slightly skimmed to make place for soft drink carbs.

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Followers of the diet are also urged to skip breakfast and do early-morning exercise instead in order to kickstart the body into burning fat.  Wait – there is a caveat you can drink two cups of coffee on an empty stomach to tell your body to burn fat faster, the effects last for four to five hours, according to Fulton.

But beyond the lack of science and the dangerous eating that the diet advocates the worst part for me, is the book and its cover line “Six Weeks to OMG – Get Skinnier Than All Your Friends”.  Never mind lack of science and basic nutrition evident in the diet, the push to encourage people to lose weight so that they are skinnier than their friends seems to lack any ethics at all. And it makes me worry for the young audience to which OMG is so directly marketed. 

Me? I’m staying out of cold water, I’m eating breakfast AND broccoli and I am going to remind my child that balance is what it’s all about in diet and in life in general.

I might also try and encourage him never to buy a book with the word OMG in the title

Where do you stand on the issue of diets? Have you ever been on a crash diet? Did it help you at all?

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