Diets may be quick fixes but eating right a better long-term choice

By Bill Delaney

Dressed in his basketball shorts, a tank top, and running sneakers Josh London comes home after a morning run and starts to gather food from his refrigerator onto his kitchen counter.  He is making his meals for the rest of his day, something he struggles to do on a regular basis.

London is trying an old diet called the Cabbage Soup Diet.  Nutritionist Mitali Shah says the Cabbage Soup Diet is old, but effective.  The diet is all you can eat as long as you stick to a narrow list of foods, but most importantly the cabbage soup.  Shah noted that "as long as they eat the two bowls of cabbage soup each day they can have as much food as they want off the diet." 

London wants to lose some extra pounds he has put on since high school.  "I want to eat right," he said, "but it is honestly a commitment, and it is something I am just not motivated to do every day."  London is trying a diet for the first time in his life. At age 23, he is far from obese, but wants to start to eat healthy.  He said that eating right is incredibly hard when fast food is so cheap and easy.

 So London, like millions of Americans, is trying to diet to maintain a healthy weight. The diet London is on is one of the many popular fad diets in circulation.  Most nutritionists and medical experts noted the problem with fad diets is they provide an instant result but lack staying power.  Shah has seen many of her patients on these types of diets lose a quick 10 pounds.  But she said "a lot of people in the first five days have tremendous water weight, and they lose a lot of fluid so when they stand on the scale they see the results." 

Keeping the weight off, Shah said, is the big problem.  The Cabbage Soup Diet is a 10-day diet.  Shah said once the diet is over, people start gaining the weight back almost as fast as they have lost it.

Nutritionist Joan Siegel Blake maintained that it is more important to change your palate and develop healthy eating habits  than to go on these quick fasting diets.

If there is a diet out there that will train you to eat healthy, Shah indicated the best one might be a low-fat and high-fiber diet.  "It is basically a food pyramid diet," she said. Shah added that if a low-fat and high-fiber diet is properly tailored to a person's height and weight, it can be very effective in not only helping lose weight, but it can lead to a healthy life.

Nutritionist Laura Thompson said there are definitely a lot of different diet options out there these days and picking the right one is no easy task. Thompson gives her opinion on the three most popular fad diets in the videos below.