Eating an all-fruit diet can make you sick.

Still not convinced that “fad” rhymes with “bad” for a reason? Here are eight reasons not to fad diet:

  1. Fad diets make you gain weight. A study by the University of Minnesota, found that teens that fad-dieted gained more weight over time.
  2. Fad diets cause malnutrition. Teens are still growing. Fad dieting often means cutting out foods or food groups that give teens the nutrients they need to grow.
  3. Fad diets bring on dehydration. Teens think the diet is working because the scale says they’ve lost weight. But it’s simple dehydration caused by putting the body into shock through malnutrition and/or cutting out protein. You can lose ten pounds this way, and none of those pounds are fat. The pounds won’t stay off, but you’ll get pretty sick.
  4. Fad dieting increases cravings. Crash diets rely on willpower. It’s like you’re testing yourself: how long can I go without eating potato chips? The minute the goal is achieved, you run for the food you forced yourself not to eat while dieting. This turns the unhealthy food into a reward for losing weight. If that sounds like it doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t. Fad diets build bad associations with food. Food should never be seen as a reward. Food is fuel for the body.
  5. Fad dieting makes you feel bad. Fad dieting can cause diarrhea, irregular heartbeat, headaches, dehydration, fatigue, dizziness, constipation, nausea, and vomiting.
  6. Fad diets can make you sick. Crash diets rob your body of vitamins and minerals and may actually make you sick with anemia or osteoporosis.
  7. Fad diets are a sneaky trick. The people who plug these diets make teens think that if only they’d lose weight by cutting out a food or adding a food, they’d look better and have more friends. Again, food is fuel for the body. Eating right is part of a healthy lifestyle.
  8. Fad diets can lead to eating disorders. Fad diets set you up for quick water weight loss followed by weight gain. As the number on the scale creeps back up, a teen can become anxious and try ever stricter diets with the need to diet and restrict food becoming a compulsion, and turning into anorexia or bulimia.