Fad Diets & Why They Are So Bad For You

fad diets and why they are bad fad diet is a label that people throw around all

the time but what is a fad diet nobody ever explains it we kind of think

we know what it is but today we're going to evaluate and talk about what it

really is then we're going to talk about why diets fail and what sort of

principles do we need to understand when we develop a lifestyle so that we can

lose weight and reverse insulin resistance and reverse diabetes or

whatever other condition we have going on and achieve and maintain the health

that we all like to have coming right up

I'm doctor Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if

you like to truly master health by understanding how the body really works

make sure you subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss

anything so I just went on the computer and I've typed fad definition and here's

what came up fad is something that has an intense and

widely shared enthusiasm people get really excited and go kind of crazy

about it second especially one that is

short-lived meaning people get excited and it's kind of a fly-by-night it's

it's there and then it's gone and people have no idea why they were excited about

it and number three it's without basis in the objects qualities

it's a craze meaning people get so wound up they get so focused on a promise or

whatever they're excited about that they forget to evaluate whether it's a good

idea whether it's safe or sound could it actually be dangerous so that's what a

fad is some synonyms are also things like mania compulsion fixation novelty

that people just kind of lose their mind over something and then we call it a fad

or if in the case of food we call it a fad diet so some of the craziest ones

and the the list goes on and on and on but things like the chocolate diet or

the wine diet or the pickles diet or cottonballs diet or baby food diet I

swear I saw cotton balls diets so then someone suggested that you dip your

cotton balls and something and then you eat them and then the cotton would fill

up so that your stomachs you would feel full and of course that's just

ridiculously dangerous I mean if you have a suicide if you have a death wish

then then go for that the others they just fall on their absurdity because of

course you could lose a little bit of weight but it is so far from sustainable

it is far from nutritious and it's nothing

that anyone could do for more than a couple of days so we're not even going

to go there but some of the other things that are called fad diets they're

actually more like cleanses and we're not going to get into detail here but a

cleanse has there's a time and a purpose for a cleanse if you understand why you

do it you don't do a cleanse to lose weight and then go back to doing the

things that you did before the cleanse that's just absurd you're just going to

recreate the problem but if you do what's called for example the lemon

cleanse where you drink lemon juice sweetened with maple syrup or you just

eat grapefruits or you do just cabbage soup or you squeeze fresh juice for

yourself when you do a juice fast these are cleanses and the purpose is

not to lose weight it's to give your body a break from digestion it's to give

your body a break in some shape or form now you can do the same thing really

with just a fast or a water fast so there are many different ways of doing a

cleanse but realize it's there for a reason it's not to lose weight and it's

for a limited time okay so we're gonna leave those and then we're going to talk

about some of the most more common ways that people are trying to lose weight

because I'm just gonna assume that for most people when they go on a diet

it is to lose weight that's just 99% of people the ones we're going to look at

is calorie restriction as one way to lose weight we're going to talk about

keto and low carb high fat and intermittent fasting when you talk about

those as a group because they share the common principles that make them

effective then we're going to talk about the USDA recommendations / the standard

American diet and I know they're not exactly the same so I'm gonna qualify

why I put them on the same line here in a little bit but let's start with

calorie restriction that's been the most common way for the last

years or so people just say oh I'm gonna eat less and I'm gonna lose weight and

then they think that that's the way to go and this is what the calorie in

calorie out people talk about for the most part they think that if you can

just create a calorie deficit then you will lose weight and that's the only way

and they're right in the sense that it is all about calories that whatever you

put in has to get burned but they miss the big picture they miss the point that

if you restrict calories your body will slow its metabolism and then you eat

even less and your body will slow its metabolism even less so it's a vicious

cycle let's talk about does it work and again when we say work doesn't mean can

you lose weight and the answer here is yes because you can lose weight most

people can lose weight by eating less of anything and when they restrict calories

they usually restrict carbohydrates also here's the problem calorie restriction

means you're always eating a little bit less than you would like

that's called deprivation and if your body then slows its metabolism so you

have eat even less and it slows its metabolism and you have to eat even less

then it doesn't work in the long run so when we say does it work that's kind of

a big question mark here because you could lose weight initially but if it

really worked we would have a lot of skinny people in this country and in the

Western world the point though is you can't sustain it and therefore it

doesn't work 98% of people who lose weight on a calorie restriction will

gain it back because they don't like being hungry so we'll just say yes you

can lose weight but no it typically always fails because sooner or later you

get caught up you start eating because you kiss can't keep it up

anymore does it address the root cause what is the root cause of obesity and

weight gain the root cause is called insulin insulin is a storage hormone

insulin makes you hungry because in insulin's attempt at lowering blood

sugar it stores the excess in the cell and when you're in storage mode that

means you don't have access to the fuel so if you have all that fuel stored but

you have don't have access to it now you're gonna get hungry so insulin makes

you hungry so does it address the root cause which is insulin resistance and

the answer is no and that is the whole problem that is why it fails that's why

the body lowers its metabolism that's why you get hungry that's why you feel

deprived because the root causes insulin resistance and unless you do something

to address the insulin resistance then that is not addressing the root cause

and therefore it is also not sustainable so these cannot all go together because

we can't be deprived we can we can suffer for a period of time but then the

body adapts and we suffer more and we suffer more and then we hit a plateau

and then we can't stand it and we start eating and we gain the weight back so it

doesn't really matter if it's technically possible to sustain calorie

restriction because in the end nobody will do it and that's why we are so

overweight because yo-yo dieting is exactly that and the vast majority of

people 96 98 percent fail miserably and that we have the the record in hand then

let's talk about keto low carb and intermittent fasting does it work in the

sense that can you lose weight on it that even the skeptics even the

detractors will agree wholeheartedly that yes absolutely

that keto low-carb is probably the fastest way to lose

weight so does it work absolutely yes and in terms of maintaining the results

we have thousands of people who are finally losing weight and are keeping it

off so maybe we'd have to wait another 30 40 50 years to really see the

long-term results but my vote would be that yes it is very very sustainable

because it works with the principles of the body does keto low-carb intermittent

fasting address the root cause yes and that is the only reason it works in the

long term because it is the only reason is the only thing that addresses the

root cause which is insulin insulin is triggered by carbohydrates by sugar

especially and if we keep eating the sugar we're going to keep producing

insulin we're going to keep being insulin resistant the only way long term

to reduce that insulin resistance is to reduce the carbohydrates and keto does

low low-carb does it quite a bit keto does it a little bit more and

fasting does it the most because during fasting you eat no carbs at all so the

answer is yes it handles the root cause is it sustainable

yes because things that are not sustainable is because you don't get

satisfied and fat and protein are very very satisfying and that's the first

thing that people notice when they go on a diet like that or a lifestyle I should

say because they find that eating three meals a day of highly satiating food of

food that makes you full three meals is a lot and before you know it you

probably start cutting back a meal some people are just nervous to cut back a

meal because they've heard oh you have to eat three meals a day you have to eat

every few hours but because it is so satiating because it is so filling you

end up eating less and it's only when you're satisfied that it is sustainable

the difference between a diet and a lifestyle is that the lifestyle is

something that you plan to continue a diet is something you don't plan to

continue and therefore if you change something for the time being then it's

like implied that you plan to go back to doing the thing that didn't work before

you did the diet so obviously you're going to fail so diets ultimately always

fail that's why you should never ever do a diet again because if you do something

temporarily you plan to go back to doing the thing that didn't work so just

figure out what a lifestyle is that you can sustain and that you can maintain

and it has to be one in the long run that is satisfying because otherwise you

won't be able to sustain it so next let's talk about the USDA the US

Department of Agriculture and some dietician commented and said that oh

it's ridiculous nobody would ever suggest 60%

carbohydrates in the diet sixty percent of calories I don't know where you got

those numbers so let me tell you again I got those numbers from the USDA

recommended guidelines it's the 2015 edition they published them on a

government website you can look it up they publish they'll show the whole

thing for you you can download it it's a long long PDF lots of detail and if you

read through the different sections and you analyze it then you'll find exactly

what I'm listing here so in a 2,000 calorie diet they recommend three cups

of dairy and they say that it should be nonfat or 1% fat because the fat is evil

as we all know and if you have three cups of dairy one cup of dairy has about

14 to 15 grams of sugar the sugar in milk is called lactose but it's still a

sugar it's a disaccharide and raises blood sugar and it acts exactly

the same way as table sugar does on blood sugar and insulin and so forth

then they ask you to eat two cups of fruit and some of that can be fruit

juice and you could eat canned fruit or fresh fruit or dried fruit and if your

two cups of fruit the average fruit is going to have

somewhere around fifteen grams of sugar per a hundred grams so two cups of fruit

is about 400 or 500 grams so I am counting sort of low here with 60 grams

of sugar from the fruit and yes it is slightly better than table sugar because

it's not processed it occurs in the fruit so you're getting it in a natural

form you're getting it with some fiber you're getting it with some vitamins but

in the end the glucose and the sucrose is gonna raise blood sugar and the

fructose is going to create insulin resistance in the liver it doesn't

matter in the end where it comes from or what you call it

yes there are some that are a little better but in the end it still causes

insulin spikes and insulin resistance in the liver then they suggest you have six

ounces of grain and one slice of toast is one ounce basically so that you

should have six units equivalent to a slice of toast and half of that should

be whole grain so that leaves you to do whatever eat whatever you like with the

other half so that could be white toast or white flour products of some sort and

each of those will give you about 55 grams of sugar and they don't call it

sugar they call it carbohydrate because sugar is when it's reduced down to a

single molecule to a single ring of sugar or two rings of sugar called a

disaccharide but the starch in the grain is just the same

sugar molecules linked up in change so it's only ten minutes away from becoming

the same kind of sugar that you get from table sugar or glucose and the impact on

blood sugar is exactly the same it's gonna differ a few percent some points

up or down depending on how nature how the the sugar is packaged in the food

but in the end it all breaks down into sugar and it all creates an insulin

response then they tell you to have no more than ten percent of your total

calories from added sugar so these are things that you either add yourself like

two teaspoons of sugar and the coffee or sugar on your yogurt or sugar in the

yogurt or sugar in cookies or soda etc and they say you can have up to fifty

grams or 10% of your caloric intake so 2,000 calories 10 percent of that is 200

calories 4 calories per gram of sugar means they think 50 grams of sugar per

day is an okay amount in addition to the other sugars you're already consuming

they recommend somewhere around 300 grams of carbohydrate in total they say

you should eat a few cups of vegetables and if it's leafy greens that'll give

you about 4 or 5 grams of carbohydrate of sugar per hundred grams of vegetable

and then you have some potatoes and some starches to total up the balance there

so if we look at this then if we take the dairy which is lactose we take the

fruit which is fructose sucrose and glucose in various mixes in that fruit

and we add in the added sugar so now we're just talking pure sugar we're

talking monosaccharides and disaccharides that's a hundred and

fifty-five grams of sugar that they are recommending in the diet

and if you add in the white our that is devoid of nutrients and is

ten minutes away from becoming these mono and disaccharides

now we're talking two hundred and ten grams of sugar so I understand that the

USDA their recommendations they include and they say you should eat some

vegetables and you should have some salmon and you should have some eggs and

you should have some meat and so forth and that the general population eats a

whole lot more processed food eat a lot more candy and potato chips and Doritos

and chemicals but all in all it is not that different

it comes sure there's a little bit more process here and there but in terms of

insulin resistance they're pretty much right on par with the standard American

diet and the main distinction that they make if you read the fine print in the

USDA publication they say that we think that no more than 10% of calories should

be added sugar and today the the general public the average American the

statistics say that they eat 13% so whoopty-doo they say that most of the

problems that we have with obesity and diabetes is because they eat 13% of

their calories from sugar instead of 10 so if they just reduce it by 3% then

they should be able to reverse all of these conditions and there's nothing in

these guidelines about insulin resistance or the effect of

carbohydrates the only thing they have against sugar at all the added sugar is

that it is refined it doesn't have the nutrients the vitamins and the things

that come in the fruit and the dairy so other than the fact that it displaces

calories that has more nutrients they don't see any problem at all with that

sugar so let's look at if it's a good idea now that we understand a little bit

more or what it is so does it work does it

mean does it can you lose weight on it so well if you combine it with some kind

of restriction then yeah you could lose weight temporarily you could lose it for

a few weeks or a few months or however long you can keep that up but if you eat

the same proportions to maintain your insulin resistance then no you will not

lose weight at all does it address the root cause and the root cause being

insulin resistance can you reverse insulin resistance eating 210 grams of

sugar and again we're being generous here because the whole grain has about

the same impact on insulin as well the point being the majority of calories the

majority of food you eat are gonna spike insulin so absolutely no you are not

reversing insulin resistance in the least if you are pre-diabetic you will

become diabetic and that is why the statistics are the way they are they say

if you we monitor and you become pre-diabetic you will probably become

diabetic within 5 years that's the official version and of course that's

going to happen if you eat this kind of food and keep spiking that insulin is it

sustainable well that depends on what is it that you'd like to sustain can you

keep eating this for the rest of your life absolutely if you would like to

maintain and and keep growing the epidemic of obesity and diabetes and

cardiovascular disease and all of the degenerative conditions that are

associated with metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance then yes it is

sustainable does it get any results you want No so we'll put a yes with a

question mark because absolutely you could do it it's not going to get what

you want so now that we understand some of the

principles to look for then let's talk about what fad diets are and why they're

bad so is calorie restriction a fad diet

well let's start looking here is it intensely and widely shared enthusiasm

well maybe not people may not be so enthusiastic but since most people try

this the majority of people try this every year there's hundreds of millions

of people every year that tried this I would say that's pretty intense and

widely shared enthusiasm or idea of that concept so we're gonna say that it meets

criterion number one especially one that short-lived

so is that short-lived we can look at it two ways how long can you keep it up at

a time and that's not very long most people do it for a few weeks the other

way looking at it is how long have humans historically been applying that

principle so out of human existence being about 250,000 years calorie

restriction has been practiced for probably about a hundred years maybe a

hundred and fifty so a couple of hundred years so yeah I would say that short

lived on on both of those accounts and criteria number three without basis in

the objects qualities and meaning do they care it may not be dangerous per se

but are they getting any results are they doing it despite the fact that it

never gets them anywhere so yeah I would definitely say that that they're not

really paying attention to the results that they're getting they just don't

know any better it's like okay well it failed ten years ago and nine years ago

and eight years ago and a yo-yo and every time I lose 20 pounds I gained 25

back so I would say that's without basis in the object qualities let's talk about

keto low carb high fat and intermittent

fasting intense and widely shared enthusiasm it's not practiced by

hundreds of millions it's not practiced by the majority of the population every

year but it's pretty popular because it's getting fantastic results so I

would probably have to say that there's becoming a widely shared enthusiasm and

and I can't really blame people because it's doing what it's supposed to is it

short-lived well again don't be confused by how long we have called it a keto

diet that label was invented in the early 1900s when they were treating kids

with epilepsy so the label ketogenic diet is relatively young but how long

have humans actually been in and out of ketosis on a regular basis well anytime

that there weren't a whole lot of plants or fruits available grains weren't even

invented a hundred thousand years ago so they had meat they had nuts they had

fish and anything and if they had food they could eat that if they didn't then

they were fasting and that would put them in ketosis so even though we call

ketosis a new thing it's it's a modern concept in the terms of pursuing it it

is something that humans have done for as long as we have been around so is

that short lived it's as far from short-lived as you can get it's the

entire human existence that we've done that so absolutely not

number two and number three without basis in the object qualities it's a

craze well this would imply that it would be dangerous that people would do

it because they get some sort of promise but they don't really care if it's

healthy or good for them and some people might get into it with being so

desperate to try something that finally works that they may not care but when we

look at the results when we see people reducing insulin resistance getting off

metformin getting off insulin losing weight blood sugar going from the 300s

to normal 80 or 90 when we see people getting off cholesterol medication when

their seizures go away when we see people getting off blood-pressure

medication when they have fewer heart attacks then we can't say that that's

without basis in the objects qualities it is getting all the results not just

the weight loss but it's basically creating not all but most of the results

that people are looking for there are still other factors there's still

disease processes outside of insulin resistance there's toxicity and

autoimmunity and so forth but 90 plus percent of diseases are related to

insulin resistance and if you practice keto low-carb intermittent fasting with

whole food then you are going to get excellent excellent health results so we

have to give it a a non check on number three as well it looks like calorie

restriction is a fad it looks like keto is not a fad unless you discount the

fact that people get excited about it that it's a fad so let's look at the

USDA the the standard American diet and again I know they're not exactly the

same but the principles are so close and it's what people have been eating for

the most part and as the government recommended against fat about 30 40

years ago when they started publishing these guidelines the rate of obesity and

the rate of diabetes went from a fast growth to an exponential growth it just

took off like absolutely crazy because when people were afraid of fad and they

thought anything nonfat was good they started eating more carbs and more bread

and more cookies and more sugar and the results speak for themselves is it a fad

an intense and widely shared enthusiasm what is most of this

it's sugar and grain it's comfort food or people crazy about that

is there a lot of processed foods that have these components that people are

excited about you bet it's trillion dollar industry that's why

people have carb addictions and sugar addictions it's the greatest drug

addiction in the history of mankind I would say that's definitely an intense

and widely shared enthusiasm especially one that short-lived so we've been

eating processed foods for maybe a hundred hundred and fifty years we've

had an abundance of processed foods for maybe 50 to 70 years and we've had an

abundance of processed low fat food for about 35 40 years I'd say that's

extremely short-lived so definitely it meets criteria number two so let's look

at number three without basis in the objects qualities well I don't know

about you but it sort of seems crazy for the USDA to publish some guidelines when

they see that there's a crisis in obesity and diabetes they say this is

how you're supposed to eat and then after that it gets worse and then they

do some studies and they find out that well more people are actually following

the guidelines according to the surveys there's a greater percentage that are

following the guidelines there's a greater percentage that are exercising

more and yet the epidemic just keeps going that looks kind of crazy to me and

if the end result is the current healthcare situation where we're

spending more money than any other country in the world and we ranked last

on the health scale of the quality of life scale of any industrialized nation

then that seems kind of crazy that seems like they're recommending something

without paying any attention to the results that they're getting

so what does this mean well if you're honest about this and you understand

what a fad diet is you understand that keto low-carb intermittent fasting are

not fad diets you would also have to conclude that the fad diet that the most

popular the most widely spread the one that meets the most criteria except

maybe these absolutely ridiculous ones for you just consuming cotton balls or

wine which I think we can agree we don't need to consider the USDA the standard

American diet is the worst fad diet we have ever seen it's been around for a

very short time it has disastrous results and they keep recommending it

even though it has no promise of changing anything

so fad diets are bad because they don't work diets are bad period because you

can never create a long-lasting solution unless you develop a lifestyle that you

can sustain is there any fad diet that I would recommend absolutely not I don't

recommend a diet I don't recommend a fad diet I don't recommend calorie

restriction I don't recommend the standard American diet or the USDA

government guidelines I recommend you learn as much as you can about how the

body actually works the principles that govern insulin the principles of whole

food and what it does to the body learn more watch the videos on this channel

that talk about brain and cortisol and stress because all of that participates

in the big picture the only lifestyle that is sustainable is one that is

satisfying and that provides the nutrients that your body needs those are

going to differ for different people some people are going to have to do a

lot of intermittent fasting to reverse and maintain their insulin resistance

some people can live on a low or low to moderate carb level and never develop

insulin resistance and then that's their balance as long as

they stay away from toxic stuff and things that are allergic to they'll be

fine and that might even be close to what the government is recommending if

they have if they're active if they eat whole food and if they have never

developed insulin resistance in the first place I don't think I would

recommend anyone to go to 300 grams but they might be able to eat half of that

150 grams and be fine if you have developed insulin resistance though if

you have obesity or pre-diabetes or something like that then you can never

go even close to these numbers probably ever again so there's a balance that you

have to figure out for yourself where do you fit on that on that continuum so

don't let anyone talk you into a fad diet not even the so-called balanced

diet that is promoted by the USDA guidelines if you're new to the channel

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