Many of the weight loss programs for women target your desire to lose weight at any cost, so many of them have only short term success, if any. These weight loss programs come up with some pretty interesting explanations for some seriously insane weight loss methods. The key to avoiding these weight loss programs is to spot them before you find out they don’t work the hard way.

Because so many weight loss programs for women have some type of “expert” guaranteeing the success of the diet, many women feel comfortable trying them without worrying. Keep reading to find out what type of weight loss programs for women you should avoid.

Very Low Calorie Diets

Since its no secret that successful weight loss requires you to create a calorie deficit, that is to burn more calories than you consume, many weight loss programs for women reel you in with very low calorie diets. The rationale, if you can call it that, is that the fewer calories you consume the quicker the excess weight will fall off.

Unfortunately that is exactly the reason that VLCDs are the number 1 weight loss programs for women to avoid. A very low calorie diet, which is generally defined as 800 calories or less each day, so you can see why you should avoid them. In fact, a study in the Journal of Diabetes and its Complications found that very low calorie diets can lead to both non-insulin and insulin dependent diabetes.

Very low calorie diets are weight loss programs for women to avoid because VLCD is just a fancy way of saying ‘starvation diet’. You won’t have energy to workout, make healthy food choices, or any other good choices on such a low calorie intake because we need those calories to help keep our bodies functioning properly.

Diets like the Grapefruit Diet and Baby Food Diet are very low calorie diets.

Long-Term Fasting

Fasting is another weight loss program for women to avoid because long term fasting deprives your body of essential nutrients, and causes many of the same side effects as very low calorie diets. Many fasts like the Master Cleanse, require just a liquid concoction that has so few calories it would make a very low calorie diet blush.

Trying weight loss programs for women that require you to eat no food for extended periods of time (more than 2 or 3 days) is starvation and your body will begin to react accordingly. But that’s not even the main reason you should avoid these types of weight loss programs for women. The real reason is because you’re trying to lose fat, not water and not muscle, which are 2 things you mostly certain will lose during a long term fast. So yes, the number on the scale will go down during this type of diet, but not the way you want.

{Staring at an empty plate sounds good…until your stomach starts growling!}

Consider intermittent fasting as a healthy alternative to fad fasting. These weight loss programs like Eat Stop Eat allow you to take brief breaks from without starving your body and depriving it of essential nutrients.

Pills

Weight loss programs for women that require you to pop a pill to lose weight is yet another program to avoid. Let’s just get this out here now; most pills don’t contain enough of the major ingredients to foster weight loss. These pills exist for one purpose; to make money.

The larger and perhaps most dangerous reason you should avoid weight loss programs for women that require you to use pills is because they never teach you how to lose weight and keep it off. So, after you’ve spent your hard-earned money on hundreds of dollars worth of diet pills you’ll gain the weight back and have to start all over again.

Food Elimination Diets

Food elimination diets are just another weight loss program for women to avoid because there is nothing so inherently bad and fat-inducing about a particular food that you should eliminate it from your diet. Diets like Atkins and Dukan would have you believe that carbohydrates are the reason you gained weight, when the truth is that too many of the wrong carbohydrates are why you gained weight.

Whether it’s eliminating a certain color or a certain food group, these diets try to give you a simple answer to the complicated problem of losing weight. If it were just as simple as one specific thing making you gain weight, we would all be on the path to weight loss. The one thing that we should reduce greatly, if not eliminate altogether is processed foods like fast foods and prepackaged snack foods and that seems to be the hardest thing to do.

Instead of eliminating one thing, try to adopt a well balanced diet that has whole grains, lean protein, fruits, vegetables and low fat dairy products.

{Yummy yes, but reduce not eliminate for weight loss success!}

No Exercise Diets

Any weight loss program for women that does not fully endorse and encourage some type of physical activity on a regular basis is a program to avoid. As much as you may hate to work up a sweat, the fact is that it is an essential and healthy part of losing weight and keeping it off.

Regular exercise helps you burn calories and build muscle, which helps give your body that toned and thin look that made you start looking for weight loss programs for women in the first place. It doesn’t matter if its walking, yoga, swimming or kickboxing; find some physical activities to help you burn additional calories because that is how you lose weight.

Healthy Weight Loss Programs

The weight loss program for women that you choose to implement should contain a well balanced diet as well as regular physical activity. The reason that many of the diets listed above are ones to avoid is because they don’t teach you the skills you need to adopt a healthy lifestyle to maintain weight loss.

The weight loss programs for women that you decide to adopt should act as a springboard so that when your “diet” is over you can take what you learned and implement it into everyday life. You can’t simply eat 800 calories a day for the rest of your life or live on a liquid diet until you die, and that’s why you should avoid those types of weight loss programs for women.

If you’re curious about a healthy way to help you begin to eat healthier and lose weight, read our Eat Stop Eat review to find out why intermittent fasting can help you lose weight.