A popular remedy for weight reduction is a fixed diet plan. A lot of magazines and books have been carrying these planned diets, with menus for a whole week or even a month. It seems remarkable that people would be so eager to follow menu plans made out by someone who cannot know their food preferences or circumstances, or the availability of various food items at different times. Either they must believe that the diet has some magical properties, or they simply want someone else to do all the thinking for them.

Then there are also the peculiar diets based on only a few foods, such as the all. fruit diet, the green vegetables diet, the milk-banana diet, the raw egg and orange juice diet, the raw tomato and boiled egg diet etc. These appeal to Some people either as short cuts in reducing or by their sheer unusualness. Such diets are not only monotonous to take, but also so one-sided that they are sure to be too low and too high in some ‘ of the nutrients.
These reducing diets can often help reduce weight, but they rarely provide a lasting solution to obesity. Often the drastic weight-reducing diet is so monotonous that it usually defeats its purpose. The reducer becomes so hungry for normal food that he may use up a week’s allotment of calories in a one-hour eating orgy. A similar fate awaits those who try to lose weight by skipping meals-they often eat so much at their meals that they gain instead of losing weight!
Some people believe that toasting bread lowers its calorie content. It does not-the application of heat causes a chemical alteration of the starch, but does not make it any less fattening. Washing cooked rice is another trick that is supposed to help dieters - it simply washes away the water-soluble vitamins, not the calories.
Reducing pills too do not have a lasting effect. The ‘filler’ (a chemically inactive substance like methyl cellulose, which is not absorbed by the body) gives a sensation of fullness and temporarily lessens hunger pangs. However, its efficacy lasts only so long as the dieter manages to exercise restraint at his next meal.
A purpose somehow similar to that of the filler is served by another drug, the ‘depressant’, usually an active chemical like amphetamine, which interferes with the appetite-controlling centre of the brain to reduce the dieter’s desire to eat.
One drug that really melts fat is the ’stimulator’, most often a thyroid extract. This acts as a sort of chemical exerciser, speeding up the body’s reactions so that the calories are consumed faster than usual.
Another type of pill reduces weight without really affecting obesity. This is the ‘diuretic’, a dehydrating agent that stimulates the kidneys to drain out water from the body tissues. The loss is not in the fat at all, only in water. The pill-taker may fool the weighing machine, but not his tailor!
One of these drugs is sometimes prescribed by a physician as a morale booster - they help induce a weight loss that encourages the struggling reducer to stick to his slimming programme a little longer. But many of them cause undesirable side-effects such as nervousness and insomnia. To reduce, the patient must still restrict his intake of calories and increase his exercise. When he does so with the help of synthetic appetite curbers or stimulants, he achieves nothing towards the development of sensible permanent eating and exercise habits. Almost invariably he will regain the lost weight (and frequently more) shortly after he stops taking the drugs.
So you see there is no short cut to reducing!