Easy Fat Loss – Fiction or Reality?

A large part of the planet’s population has to face the weight rsp. fat issue in some way or other, some people sooner, some later. A few of those obviously ignore the matter and knowingly or by ignorance are paying the price for this mindlessness: reduced life quality, disease and/or premature death.

Buying into the promises of a constantly growing, multi-billion weight loss industry, easy fat loss comes under the name of low carb, South Beach, Atkins, smash and crash diet (you name it!).  And the times, where dieting was solely a first world matter, are long gone.  Overweight and obesity have conquered meanwhile the African and Asian continent and a country like China – in the past a role model for healthy eating habits! – has nowadays more overweight citizens than the former undisputed No 1, the heavy weight world champion United States of America.

But there is a problem for those, wanting to trim their body fat. It can be formulated in the following two points:

1.  There are hundreds of easy fat loss offerings in the market, resulting in a lot of confusion and frustration of those, falling prey to the promises of often shady companies.

2.  Many diets either have side effects, whose long term influence are not known, or result in only short term success, if no change in lifestyle accompanies the diet period.

Problem No 2 has to be considered as serious as our health and wellbeing is at stake and therefore cannot be taken lightly.

So what can be done about this hopelessly intransparent diet diversity? An average human lifespan would not suffice to test only 50% of the so-called easy fat loss diets on the market in order to find the one, which may be suitable for us, bringing long lasting success without affecting negatively our health. And anyhow, who wants to spend years of his/her life to find it out and in the course wasting tons of money?

I can see three approaches, which one can consider to come at least  to a shortlist of suitable diets for specific goals of weight rsp. fat reduction:

1.  A scientifically based analysis of pros and cons

2.  Word-of-mouth and success stories from family and friends

3.  Reviews of those diets, which have a good feedback from customers, and fact based recommendations

As a physicist and having been research scientist myself, obviously approach number one is extremely tempting to me.  Imagine for a moment, one could find a kind of scientific proof that only diet A or diet B works perfectly for Mr X or Mrs Y or that a diet can be tailor-made per formulation for each individuum.  No question, this would be the ultimate mega cash cow of the easy fat loss diet industry.

Yet, any down-to-earth person will have serious doubts about this ever becoming reality in the future due to the inherent complexity of the human body and changing life circumstances.  Nevertheless, we will tackle those approaches in the following blogs in more detail without exaggerated expectations that we are on the verge of finding the holy grail in the dieting world.