Dietitians Susie Burrell and Leanne Ward reveal the two worst diets you can follow for your health

If you’re looking to lose weight this year, you should avoid two popular diets that could do more harm than good, dietitians say.

Susie Burrell and Leanne Ward, who host the popular nutrition podcast. The Nutrition Couch – singled out extremely low-calorie and detox diets as the “worst” options you can go on if you want to lose weight long-term.

“On any given day, there are a number of different diets that are trending on social media or aggressively advertised on TV, but when you’re a dietitian, there are a couple that do more harm than good and drive us crazy,” he said. Susie. .

EXTREMELY LOW CALORIES

The first thing to avoid at all costs, dietitians said, is an extremely low-calorie diet, or one where you consume 500 or 800 calories a day.

“I have more contempt for diets that promote severe caloric restriction, or fewer than 1,000 calories,” Susie said.

“I’m thinking of diets like the HCG diet or fasting approaches. I can’t tell you how frustrated I get when I see a 200 or 220 pound woman who has been religiously following an 800 calorie diet.’

The reason you hate this diet is because while it might initially cause you to lose a pound or two quickly, this will level off immediately as soon as you inevitably fall off the bandwagon and eat more, and may even lead to weight gain. of weight.

“Remember, 800 calories is less than half of what the average woman requires daily to get her nutrition,” Susie said.

“In the case of what it looks like, it’s a couple of hard-boiled eggs and a slice of toast, a tuna salad for lunch, and a piece of boiled fish and vegetables for dinner, with maybe a piece of fruit for a snack.” , each one of them”. day.’

She said it’s ‘a no brainer’ that it will give immediate results, but as soon as you stop, the weight comes back on and quickly:

“Metabolically, it does a lot of damage,” added Susie.

The reason is that you’re teaching your body to get by on less, so it goes into starvation mode and then hangs on to whatever excess fat it can when you eat normally again.

They said you should avoid both as while they may produce short term results, the results never last as you will always fall off the bandwagon and end up gaining the weight back.

DETOX DIETS

The second diet that dietitians absolutely hate is anything that involves the word detox.

“The lemon water diet, the green juice detox diet—any kind of detox is absolutely impossible,” Leanne said.

“The main reason I hate them is because weight loss is often just water weight or even muscle weight.”

Even if you follow a cold-pressed juice diet or a lemon detox diet for a short period of time, like two weeks, he said, you’ll lose “a lot of muscle mass,” which isn’t good for the look or feel of your body.

“Of course, drink green juices if you like, but focus on high-quality foods and think about your nutrition,” Leanne said.

Instead, dietitians are fans of 80/20 balanced approaches, where they eat healthy 80 percent of the time and indulge in a little of what they love the other 20 percent.

Both Leanne and Susie try to fill their plates with a variety of proteins, complex carbohydrates, vegetables, fruits, and good fats like extra virgin olive oil and avocado.

Then if they want a piece of dark chocolate or a glass of red wine, they allow themselves 20 percent of the time.

Susie Burrell has been in the headlines recently after her husband Chris Smith was sacked by Sky News and radio station 2GB in December, before he checked himself into a mental health facility.