The truth: Fad diets are very hard to help lose weight and keep it. While common fad diets promise quick and sudden weight loss, they eliminate certain foods from your diet completely.

While some people may lose weight with diets like Atkins and The South Beat Diet, diets that restrict foods or certain food groups from your diet sooner or later become hard to follow. They become boring due to the lack of variety and you want to stop following them.

Not only are fad diets hard to stick to, but they have the ability to be unhealthy in the long-term due to the all the vitamins and nutrients. Additionally, losing weight at a rapid pace (more than a few pounds a week after the initial water-loss) may put you at a greater risk for gallstones. These are clusters are material in that gallbladder that can cause you pain.

Diets that do not provide you with more than 800 calories per day also have the ability to cause abnormalities in heart rhythm – potentially causing death.

The best way to lose weight using a diet is to exercise, watch fattening and sugary foods, and make sure you get all your daily vitamins and minerals by supplement. This will help you develop good eating and exercise patterns in the long run, instead of simply choosing a fad diet and excluding important food groups completely.