As people start thinking about summer holidays, we hear lots of talk about quirky diets purporting to be the answer to our beach body dreams. Just putting the word "diet" into Amazon brings up some crazy titles such as The Overnight Diet, the Greedy Girls Diet & The Belly Fat Diet. All are high on promises, but none inspire me with confidence.

There's nothing new about fad diets. The same ideas have been remodeled & repackaged for decades & have never really worked. Fad diets are easy to spot, they tend to have one or more of the following in common:

1. Promises rapid weight loss or a quick fix. Yes, most will lead to fast weight loss, but the focus is on the short term, so you will end up putting the weight back on again.

2. Contains a ritual (drink grapefruit juice everyday) or sacrifice (cut out carbs). Many of these things are based on dodgy science or no research at all. Cutting out certain food groups could prevent you from getting the important nutrients & vitamins that your body needs to function properly.

3. Involves a magical food or food combination. These often make far-fetched claims with little or no evidence to back them up.

4. Rigid menus or monotonous food choices. These are impracticable to follow in the long-term and may be nutritionally unbalanced. The minute you go back to your old lifestyle, the pounds will start returning.

Lose weight the HA fitness way!

Eat less & exercise more. We put on weight when the amount of calories we eat exceeds the amount we burn off. To lose weight, you need to eat less & burn more. Get in touch if you'd like to know more about how we can make this work for you!