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Any diet that is designed to help you lose weight is bound to centre on reducing calories. The various diets available may all be packaged differently, but they are basically selling the same idea: if you want to lose weight then you have to burn more calories than you consume. Surely it is commonsense, and yet there are still plenty of people prepared to believe that simply reducing their calories won't work for them, but that there must be a diet somewhere that can help them to lose weight. In reality, though, if you are consuming 500 calories a day less than you are using, you should lose a pound in a week. Thus, any diet which cuts calories sufficiently enough should help you to lose weight.

There are plenty of diets to choose from for those who want to lose weight. You might decide to follow the maple syrup diet, the Atkins diet, the Zone diet, the watercress soup diet, or the G.I. diet. There are plenty of others available if none of these suit you. Most of the diets listed here come under fire from dieticians and nutritionists for being too restrictive and not nutritionally well-balanced enough and there is even some concern about the long term effects of following the less ridiculous low-carbohydrate diets such as the Atkins and Zone diets.

It is clear to all sane people that following the maple syrup diet or the watercress soup diet for a significant amount of time, maybe even for just a short time, is not a good idea, and yet people still choose to do so. What these diets are called reflect exactly what food needs to be consumed in order to lose weight. The maple syrup diet involves drinking maple syrup mixed with lemon juice, water and cayenne pepper, whilst the watercress soup diet means consuming watercress soup for each 'meal'. Both involve a drastic reduction in the number of calories you consume, so it is little wonder that you lose quite a lot of weight quickly.

Once you go back to your old eating habits, though, you soon pile the pounds back on, as your body readjusts to receiving proper meals once again, and doesn't want to let go of those extra calories. These diets may seem ridiculous, but people are still prepared to buy into the idea that they can lose weight quickly without fundamentally having to change their lifestyle habits. They want to believe that they can lose the weight and then go back to eating and drinking whatever they want. They also want to see results quickly, which they do when they follow these diets, but usually they also see how quickly they can gain the weight back.

Losing weight and keeping the weight off should involve a long-term commitment and making subtle changes to your life which end up permeating your way of thinking so that you no longer even have to think about eating healthily or getting enough exercise you just do it. It shouldn't just be about losing a lot of weight quickly by following the latest fad diet.

Learn more about this author, Michelle Wilkinson.
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