A client came to me about 40 pounds overweight and frustrated. Over the three preceding years, he had lost 200 pounds, desperately trying a variety of fad diets. Sounds impressive, right?
It wasn’t.
When I say he lost 200 pounds, that’s counting the weight he had lost and gained back. He would drop 40 pounds, then gain 50 back. He would lose 50 pounds, then gain 60 back! It’s called yo-yo dieting or weight cycling. It’s not just a waste of your time; it could do your body harm.
Today’s fad diets are merely the latest in a long line of ineffective and often dangerous diet crazes. Over the past 20 years, Americans have been bombarded with one diet after another. Though the diets appear to be as different from each other as night and day, they all have something in common: They only work up to a certain point, if they work at all.
I believe that once you understand why these diets fall short, you can choose a more sensible plan and achieve the body and healthy lifestyle you’ve always hoped for. I don’t want you to waste any more time or effort on diets that won’t work. Failure is something your body simply can’t afford.
In doing research for the 5-Factor Diet, I read dozens of diet books. As someone who makes a living educating people about health and fitness, I was shocked at how ridiculous many of these diets were.
You see, whenever you begin a low-calorie diet, your body notices that it’s being fed fewer calories and immediately lowers your basal metabolic rate (BMR)—the rate at which your body burns calories. That means the result of eating fewer calories is burning fewer calories all day long. Once you quit the diet—and you will—it takes a while for your body to bring your BMR back to normal.
That’s why yo-yo dieters end up gaining more and more weight with each diet failure. If you go back to your old eating habits while your BMR is still low, you won’t just regain the pounds you lost, you’ll pack a few extra on top. Repeat this cycle a few times and you end up gaining more weight the more often you try to lose it. It’s physically exhausting and emotionally frustrating.
I want you to ask yourself what I consider the single most important health and fitness question: Do you want to look good tomorrow or do you want to look good for the rest of your life?
You need to think of your health and fitness goals as a marathon instead of a sprint. Most fad diets claim they can help you drop pounds fast, and I know that promise can be incredibly alluring. But that weight loss is usually the result of nutritional tactics that are not only unhealthy but also impossible to maintain.
To take pounds off for good, it’s all about finishing the race. You need an effective and efficient plan of attack that lets you lose weight consistently, not just immediately. What differentiates the 5-Factor Diet from all the fad diets that I’m about to discuss is this: While all of these fad diets work for a short time, only the 5-Factor Diet will keep you lean and healthy for a lifetime.
This diet claims it’s your blood type, not just the calories you consume, that causes weight gain. According to the program, the secret to losing fat is to eat only specific foods that are compatible with your blood type. Eating the wrong foods is supposedly like receiving a transfusion of the wrong type of blood, causing substances from your food, called lectins, to enter your bloodstream. It’s this flow of lectins that supposedly causes blood cells to clot, leading to a variety of health issues.
The diet’s claims about blood type and weight loss are not backed up by relevant scientific research. Your blood type has nothing to do with your body’s ability to burn excess fat. The plan restricts not only calories but food types as well. You’re told not to eat certain healthy foods that are rich in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. And the diet recommends some unusual foods and supplements that are only available online.
It’s easy to see why so many people have tried this strict, low-calorie program that has been around for decades. Its proponents claim you can drop up to 20 pounds in seven days by eating little more than cabbage-based soup several times a day. Cycling on and off the diet (7 days on, 14 days off) is said to promote rapid weight loss.
This diet can be harmful to your body because it restricts your caloric intake to less than 1,000 calories a day. It leaves you feeling perpetually hungry because you’re basically forcing your body to live off nothing but fiber and water. There’s no protein or fats and few vitamins or minerals. The weight loss most people see is almost always water and lean muscle mass because the lack of protein causes your body to cannibalize its own muscle tissue. You will also likely have uncomfortable side effects such as diarrhea, abdominal pain, lightheadedness, and flatulence.
In this popular diet, you’re required to eat a whole grapefruit with every meal. Why a grapefruit? According to the diet, grapefruits contain a special fat-burning enzyme.
The negatives of this diet are identical to those of the Cabbage Soup Diet, even though the plan does allow small amounts of protein. It’s not the grapefruit that deserves the credit for whatever weight is lost; this restrictive, 800-calorie diet basically starves you. No matter how much you may wish otherwise, there is simply no such thing as a superfood with magical abilities to make you lose weight.
“I tried practically every fad diet invented, but they never worked long term. The 5-Factor Diet opened my eyes to correct, healthy eating. By following Harley’s plan, I was finally able to learn to change my eating habits. Diets come and go, but Harley’s plan is for the rest of your life!”
Danielle Martin AGE: 37 WEIGHT LOST SO FAR: 77 lbs.
The creators of this nutrition plan believe that cavemen and cavewomen were lean and healthy because of the all-natural foods they ate. According to this diet, processed and cultivated foods, including wheat and grains, are the true cause of all major disease and obesity. The diet requires you to return to your Neanderthal roots by eating only what your ancestors did. That means eliminating all processed foods in favor of natural foods such as fish, lean meats, berries, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.
I can’t argue with the premise that the less processed a food is, the healthier it is for your body. However, it is a stretch to claim that the lack of processed foods was the main reason our ancestors were leaner than we are. But they also had to spend many physically demanding hours hunting down or picking their own food.
Cavemen were so lean in part because they were much more physically active than we are today. Yet that factor is never considered in the caveman equation. Nor does the diet discuss the fact that our ancestors lacked convenient access to food and thus ate significantly less than we do. And there is no scientific research to date that links wheat or grains to obesity and resulting diseases—yet this diet claims that corn is responsible for more cancer deaths than
cigarettes. There is a more logical reason why our ancestors didn’t suffer from cancer, heart disease, and other modern-day ailments: They never grew old because the average life span of a Neanderthal man was 20 years!
Sanaa Lathan ACTRESS AND STAR OF THE MOVIE LOVE AND BASKETBALL
“I was asked to lose some weight for my last film. Harley had me do his 5-Factor Diet and exercise program. Within weeks my body was transformed. Getting in shape was never this easy. And I just saw my movie. And if I may say so myself, my body looks better than it ever has on film. I’m a fan for life.”
This diet eliminates foods that are high in refined sugar and carbohydrates that rank high on the glycemic index.
Break out your calculator because you’ll have to make sure every meal is divided into 30 percent carbohydrates, 30 percent protein, and 40 percent fat. Not only are these calculations time-consuming, but your daily caloric consumption is limited to an unhealthy 1,200 calories. You don’t lose weight because you’re eating less sugar; you lose it because you’re eating too few calories. The diet restricts many healthy-for-you foods, such as carrots, that contain ample amounts of essential vitamins and minerals. Instead, it claims you can lose weight while eating high-fat, low-sugar foods such as hamburger, steak, and cheese.
These diets make you forgo food in favor of a liquid meal replacement drink typically made from sugar, fat-free milk powder, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. On some versions of the plan you eat only shakes; on others you also have small, low-calorie meals.
One of my clients was on a shake diet for a while. Every day she drank five shakes instead of eating real food. She was miserable and depressed, especially when she went out to dinner at a five-star restaurant and had to bring a shake with her instead of eating the delicious meals.
Liquid diets are antisocial, and they’re not sustainable because they’re not satisfying. Research has shown that liquids don’t fill your stomach as effectively as solid foods. And most of these shakes are deficient in dietary fiber, so you never feel quite as full. These low-calorie diets—as low as 700 calories—can stress your kidneys because many liquid dieters end up dehydrated.
This diet has you combine foods in particular ways in order to create a certain mix of enzymes that supposedly helps your body properly digest your food.
Although combining certain types of foods can be beneficial for losing weight—something I’ll explain later as part of the 5-Factor Diet—but it’s not because of the enyme mix in food, as this diet claims. The truth is, the enzymes used to digest food are created by your body.
The theory that any food that can’t be digested properly “adds” weight doesn’t make sense either. If your body can’t break down food, that means it has less chance to grab the calories and store them as body fat. Regardless of theories, this diet is also too low in protein, vitamins, and minerals to be considered healthy.
This is a six-day-a-week diet and exercise plan whose creator promises that you’ll be in the best shape of your life after 12 weeks.
You’ll notice that Body For Life encourages you to use a lot of nutritional supplements. In fact, the program seems to be designed mainly to sell these supplements. One thing I do approve of about the Body For Life plan is that it encourages regular exercise.
The theory behind super-high-fiber diets is that if you overeat fibrous foods, your meals travel through your digestive system at an accelerated pace, preventing your body from absorbing all the calories.
Eating fiber daily offers many health benefits. But eating excessive amounts of fiber doesn’t guarantee weight loss. Fiber has no absorbable calories, which simply means that high-fiber diets are lower in calories. That’s the real reason you lose weight initially on these diets.
However, eating excessive amounts of fiber can be rough on the digestive system. And it may push healthy, nutrient-rich foods out of your system with the fiber, preventing nutrients from being absorbed.
“Your book turned my life around after 15 years away from the gym had taken its toll. It was exactly what I needed to get back on track! I started using 5-Factor when I weighed 250 pounds and had a 42-inch waist. I am currently 185 pounds with a 32-inch waist. I feel amazing! Your book has given me the desire and discipline to attain a physical goal I thought was part of my past and never to be seen again!”
Andrew White AGE: 39 WEIGHT LOST SO FAR: 65 lbs.
The Ornish plan limits your protein intake to a mere 15 percent of your total daily calories. It also claims that any calories from fat cause you to get fat. The Pritikin diet forces you to limit fat consumption to less than 10 percent of your total daily calories.
With such low amounts of protein (Ornish plan) or fat (Pritikin diet), it’s not likely that you’ll feel full on either diet. That’s why some people overeat on these plans or can’t stick to the program for any great length of time.
Some weight loss plans limit the amount you eat by assigning you points based on your body weight and weight loss goals. The challenge with that is if you’re not careful, you can gobble up all your points in one or two meals. That may leave you starving later in the day.
There are also diet plans that require you to buy packaged meals. On these plan, dieters often find themselves at a loss for what to eat when they aren’t at home because they’re not taught how to create their own healthy meals. Plus these plans can be pricey. Chances are, it’s your bank account that will decide when you quit.