Losing weight is a matter of burning more calories than you eat. That’s the basic formula of many diets, including the Slim fast diet. Let’s take a look at the Slim fast diet to see just how effective it can be.

First let’s examine the basics of the Slim fast diet. In essence it revolves around drinking a shake in place of two meals for the day. Dinner is sensible regular food, and snacks can consist of two pieces of fruit and a Slim fast nutrition bar. This diet cuts about 1000 calories from the average male’s diet, and 500 from the average female’s diet – averaging about 1200 calories daily. Even without exercise, which Slim fast recommends, this diet will result in weight loss.

A good diet is easy for people to follow, and the Slim fast diet is easy. If diet is too hard to maintain it will never work. Slim fast diet also tells people to drink 6 to 8 cups of water a day – that’s a good thing.

People need certain vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients which are not found in the Slim fast diet. By replacing two meals, it’s easy to miss these things. Unfortunately, many people on this diet also cut out that real meal. The thinking is that by skipping a meal while still drinking the shakes people would lose weight more quickly. that’s a formula for disaster because a person doing this will be basically starving themselves.

Some people have found success with a modified Slim fast diet. This is something like eating two normal meals a day and replacing only one with the Slim fast shake. It’s a good, safe way to lose weight.

As with any diet be sensible when following the Slim fast diet.

I personally prefer healthier, more long term approaches to fat loss like Turbulence Training for effective workouts, and Eat Stop Eat Diet as a flexible and enjoyable approach to fat loss.

Fad diets are diets that involve rapid weight loss, but are only to be followed for a short period of time.   The term has also come to mean any diet that explodes into national or international fame, only to plummet into obscurity. Some of these fad diets include the cabbage soup diet, the Atkins diet, and the cookie diet.

Another name for these fad diets are food faddism. Any time one particular food suddenly becomes a superstar, that’s a food fad. Common aspects of these fads include:

- Some elements of the food are said to have miraculous properties.
- Many other foods are completely eliminated from the diet, because they are thought to have negative properties.

One of these fad diets that has these elements is the Atkins diet. In Atkins carbohydrates must be avoided because of their negative characteristics. At the same time, carbohydrates are the miraculous element — actually the lack of carbohydrates because it creates a metabolic state in which the body burns fat at an amazing pace.

Although it is a long-term diet, it did have short phases during which carbohydrate cutting was taken to the extreme. Unlike many fad diets the Atkins diet was designed to be something a person could stick to for a long period of time.

As with many fad diets Atkins rose quickly and fell just as quickly. For a number of years the Atkins diet was everywhere, and everyone seemed to be following it .  Entertainment magazines were full of movie stars and music stars and sports stars who claimed amazing weight loss and fitness all due to the Atkins diet. But after the death of Dr. Atkins, the diet became much less of a household word.

Many fad diets can be quite dangerous.  The Subway diet made popular in television commercials wasn’t exempt. At its center was a young man named Jared who had lost hundreds of pounds in only a year by eating Subway sandwiches. Jared’s diet was severe — going down to 900 calories a day from over 10,000.  Doctors agree that weight loss on that scale isn’t healthy. Even so, the Subway diet when followed in moderation can work.  Particularly because the diet included exercise — Jared walked 6 miles a day while losing the weight.

Be careful when taking on some of these fad diets. A long-term eating strategy combined with moderate exercise is usually the better bet.

Everyone is familiar with the Subway Diet featuring Jared, the guy who lost 245 pounds in a year by walking and replacing two meals a day with Subway sandwiches. If you ever wanted to know how this whole thing got started, keep reading.

Jared Fogle worked his way through college by working at an adult book store.  Like many people he sat around too much and ate too many snacks – his habits causing him to balloon to 425 pounds.  Jared realized his weight was critical and so started looking for a way to drop some pounds.

He tried various diets, but they didn’t work because he still had all those hours behind a counter during which to cheat.  One day he noticed a Subway sandwich store about a mile and a half from his apartment.  The seed of the Subway diet was planted.

Jared changed his daily diet to nothing but a sandwich, baked chips and a diet soda for lunch and dinner, walking the 3 mile round trip for each meal.  Now instead of a 10,000 calorie per day with no exercise lifestyle, he was eating only about 900 calories while walking 6 miles every day.  For Jared the yet named Subway diet made 245 pounds disappear in the span of a single year.

How did this Subway diet become a national ad campaign for the Subway chain?  After losing the weight Jared ran into a friend who worked with the school paper.  This buddy barely recognized Jared, so he decided to write an article about his amazing weight loss.  It was then incorporated into a Men’s Health magazine story about crazy diets that shed pounds.

When a Chicago Subway owner read the story he contacted his advertising agency about making it into an ad.  When the Chicago guys tried to get funding from the national advertising agency for a campaign, they were told it would bomb, so they funded it themselves for a local run in Chicago.

Soon the Subway diet was a success.  It was a natural for Chicago based Oprah to feature Jared and his Subway diet on her popular national show.  Subway’s national ad people contacted the Chicago ad people about airing the ad nationally.

Many people have lost a lot of weight on the Subway diet.  However, be aware that Jared was an exception and not a rule for being able to lose that much weight in so short a time.  A little more moderation is needed, but exercise and cutting calories are a proven one two punch combination in the fight against obesity. If you want the fool proof method – less time consuming and a NON BORING approach – to lose fat, you should check out the following pages below:

Eat Stop Eat Review

Turbulence Training Review