The gist of popular weight-loss diets

SO, you want to lose weight and you instantly do a search on your computer for a weight loss diet to follow. What you will get is a mind-boggling array of various diets with their own regiments and rules.

All seem to promise instant weight loss, which makes them very enticing. If you’ve ever wondered about these weight-loss diets, here’s a gist of them:   

The low carbohydrate diets

Heard of the Atkins Diet, the Zone Diet and Ketogenic Diet (popularly called the Keto)? Whatever name they come packaged in, all these diets are essentially a variation on a diet that is low in carbohydrates. If you follow these diets, you will have to strictly restrict almost all carbohydrate food such as grains (yes, say goodbye to rice!), breads, fruits, starchy vegetables such as potatoes, sweet potatoes and desserts. 

Instead, your meals will now largely consist of protein and fats, such as meat, eggs, dairy and oils. These diets usually have phases – where you strictly cut off the carbohydrates for a certain period, and then as the phases move on, you can add in a very little amount of carbohydrates that do not exceed what is allowed in the diet plan. The eventual goal of this diet is to stop your body from wanting carbohydrate foods. When you drastically reduce your carbohydrate intake, your body is then forced to burn off stored body fat instead, for energy, and this leads to weight loss. 

The breakdown of body fat and lack of carbohydrate in your body system causes the formation of ketones. Ketones are an acid waste product. Do bear in mind, that a high amount of ketones is poisonous to your body and can have detrimental consequences. So by being on this type of low carbohydrate diet, you are striving to reach and maintain that ketogenic state so you can drop the weight. The other reported side effects of a low carbohydrate diet include tiredness, dull headaches, nausea, constipation and bad breath. 

I observe that Low Carbohydrate type diets are popular for those who want fast results. Many of our Malaysian favourite foods are very carbohydrate heavy. The carbohydrates are always the foods they can’t control and overeat, so by banning them they feel the weight loss almost instantly. But it’s also one where they find the hardest to follow to sustain their initial weight loss. Eating excessive protein and high-fat foods can aggravate other underlying health conditions like gout, chronic kidney disease and heart disease – which some found out the hard way.     

The low-fat diet

In following a low-fat diet, you would typically have to cut down on fatty cuts of meats, full cream dairy products, egg yolk, nuts, oils and spreads. 

Instead, you’d be eating more vegetables, fruit, grains and lean cuts of meat and fish. As the name of the diet implies, you will also have to be mindful of the way your food is cooked. 

Remember cooking oil is the main contributor to fat in our foods. Hence you’ll have to avoid eating deep-fried foods, desserts, oily dishes, butter, margarine, etc.

The Low Fat Diets were quite the hype with quick weight loss plans in the earlier days of the dieting revolution. A whole entire food industry of low-fat food products just boomed! But as we all know, fat is what makes food moist and taste delicious. Foods too low in fat would taste dry.

So what food manufacturers did was for the fat that they reduced, they added sugar to make their products taste better. The high sugar content was just as much a contributor to extra calories as the fat.  

I observe from speaking to my clients that Low Fat Diets are hard to stick with. For one, oils and fat make foods moist and tastier. Imagine just eating a boiled piece of chicken breast or not putting any butter on your toast. Scientists who study obesity and weight loss are also not much in favour of very low-fat diets.

They observe from a collective review of studies, that people on extreme low-fat diets do not necessarily lose more weight than people who make sensible food choices to their daily intake. While you do need to be mindful of unhealthy trans fats (which can clog up your arteries), there’s no need to banish healthier types of fats such as those that you find in nuts, beans, seeds, oily fish and lean cuts of meat as part of a balanced diet.

Intermittent fasting

Fasting has been a long-time practice in many cultures for various purposes. But it has now become mainstream popular for people who are keen to lose weight. 

Intermittent fasting is essentially an eating pattern, whereby you have a designated time to have your meals and time to fast. It’s not a diet where you have specific foods to eat or not eat, but more the time when you are allowed to eat. 

There are several eating and fasting patterns in Intermittent Fasting. Some follow an eight-hour window of being able to eat and then fast for 16 hours. Some would eat regularly for five days and fast for 24 hours twice a week. 

The whole idea behind this is to help you control your urge to just eat at any time by imposing timing restrictions. In a country like Malaysia where food is easily accessible, I can see where some people will need to tell themselves they are fasting – especially if they have no self-control around food.  

For some people, this diet seems like a dream come true – eat all you want for most days of the week and then literally starve for two days in a row! A friend I knew would wallop of kinds of fatty foods during the time he could eat. And during the fasting period, he would binge on coffee and cigarettes to suppress his hunger. He lost some weight but honestly looked unhealthy. 

But do bear in mind, severely restricting your calorie intake and prolonged fasting can cause you dizziness and headaches – not to mention feeling grouchy and a loss of concentration. Needless to say, he gained back all the weight and more once he stopped Intermittent Fasting.  

Detoxing weight loss diets

Often popularised by celebrities, detox weight loss diets get a lot of buzz. They’re easily consumed as juices, broth or herbal brews as a “cleanse” – apparently to rid your body of toxins accumulated from overeating.  

Research on the health benefits and effectiveness of detox weight-loss diets do not support its use for long-term weight management or the purported removal of toxins. These brews are not nutritionally complete and may potentially have ingredients that can be harmful to your liver and kidneys. 

Diets that restrict you from eating certain foods can be downright hard to stick with to stay the course. Not to mention, you will miss out on important nutrients that those foods contain for your health. You may be better off learning to make healthy choices to reduce your overall calorie intake to an amount you can enjoy without starving yourself.

My true advice is to go see a dietitian help you tailor-make a diet plan that is uniquely workable for you. Let it help you build on cultivating better eating habits of foods that nourish a lighter, leaner you for a lifetime of better health. – The Vibes, March 15, 2021

Indra Balaratnam is a consultant dietitian