American Resurgence Blog

Freaking TACO BELL DIET!?!?!?!?!?

January 12, 2010 at 2:53 PM (Health and Fitness) (best way to lose weight, calorie, calories, cookie diet, diet, diets, fast food, fat, fat loss, healthy way to lose weight, how to lose weight, lose weight, losing weight, low calorie, low fat, protein, south beach diet, success, taco bell, taco bell diet, weight loss)

I just saw this advertisement the other day. THE TACO BELL DIET??? Are you kidding me? The first thing to consider is the source: Taco Bell. Fast food is fast food, no matter what. That is never going to change. There are some fast food places that are better than others, but whenever you exchange quality for convenience, you always lose. They even say on the website that the results are “not typical”. That is because most people who go on a diet but “don’t want to give up their fast food” DON’T LOSE WEIGHT. Gee, wonder why. I’ll tell you this, if you want to lose weight, you’re going to have to give up the convenience. Fast food makes you fat, simple as that. Do I eat fast food? Yes, occasionally, but I don’t expect to get healthy, sometimes convenience is the only option. But that still limits me to a couple times per month, and I always try to make the best decision I can.

My second problem is the approach. Apparently Taco Bell has a couple things on the menu that aren’t as fattening. The items are lower in calories and lower in fat. Here’s the problem: drop the calories, drop the fat, drop your metabolism, and get fatter in the long run. Low calorie diets only work for the short term, and after you stop (which we all do) you end up even bigger than before. On top of that the low fat craze has never worked, take a look around, we tried it. Your diet is supposed to fuel you, and that can’t work on a low calorie diet. You end up putting more stress on your body. The idea isn’t to eat less, but to eat more of the right things, and less of the wrong things. This often is an overall increase in caloric intake for my clients.

The best example I have of this is a client that I had last summer. She had stopped losing weight, and I asked her if she’d been eating. She told me that because of the heat she hadn’t been very hungry (we’d just gone through our first heat wave). I told her to make sure she ate more PROTEIN, and the very next week she lost 3 lb. That’s the way the body is supposed to work.

Lastly lets take a closer look at her results. Over 2 years she lost 54 lb, a good achievement. But that is only about half a pound per week. It is unlikely that Taco Bell was the cause of that. Most of my clients will lose at least 10 pounds in the first month with me. There are lots of other things that could have caused that 1/2 pound loss per week. Maybe she started walking, or exercising, or eating more protein, or something else. It is most likely the fact that Taco Bell is capitalizing on something that they weren’t the cause of.

The fact is the Taco Bell diet is as much a quack as the Cookie Diet, or the South Beach Diet. If you want to lose weight you need to learn how to properly fuel your body, not deprive it. God bless, and good luck on everyone’s New Years Resolutions.

Taco Bell Diet

Permalink 2 Comments