Healthy Eating: Diet myths debunked

You’ve heard them all before – cut out the carbs, sit down while you eat, sugar is the enemy – but are they true. Dr Wynnie Chan explains why these well-known fallacies are far from fact

Myth 1: You can’t have sugar, fat or alcohol if you’re on a diet
The main goal of a diet is to eat fewer calories than you need to maintain your current body weight. For most of us who want to lose weight permanently, we should follow a diet or eating plan that is nutritionally sound, tasty and not based on a single or limited range of foods.

A realistic diet will not restrict certain foods or ingredients (especially our favourite ones) like sugar, fat and alcohol across the board, as this will only make you feel deprived. For many people, an eating plan that doesn’t allow the occasional treat is a short-lived one. Additionally, if you severely restrict your calories while dieting, then once you stop the diet and begin to eat these foods again (which is inevitable), you will likely gain the weight back. This is because your metabolism slowed during the diet and you won’t be able to efficiently burn the amount of calories you’re now consuming.

Because many people find they can stick to a long-term diet if they’re allowed the odd sugary ‘treats’, many successful weight loss programmes, such as Weight Watchers, allow sweets. If you have a sweet tooth or drink alcohol regularly, the most effective way to reduce your intake is to phase out these items gradually. This might mean cutting down on ‘visible sugar,’ such as the pure kind you put in tea or coffee. For alcohol, it might mean alternating alcoholic drinks with non-alcoholic ones.

Myth 2: Meal replacements are the best way to lose weight because they help shrink your stomach.
Meal replacements, like Slimfast or other similar very low calorie diets (VLCD), usually come in the form of a high-protein, low-fat drink. Meal replacement plans are designed to be followed for a short period of time – weeks or sometimes even days – and they encourage rapid weight loss. These plans, which usually provide around 600 calories per day, replace normal foods and are intended to kickstart your diet by providing concentrated nutrients in one low-calorie ‘meal’.

The plans may be used in different ways. Some use the meal replacements for up to a week without any food, whilst others use them for several weeks replacing one or two meals a day and eating a normal meal in the evening. Whilst they may be useful to those who are clinically obese or who can’t lose weight on conventional diets, it is important that these plans are never used for longer than four weeks. They are designed to help kickstart your diet only and don’t provide enough calories for long-term nutrition.

The Department of Health has expressed concern over the safety of these diets for people with heart and kidney disease, hypertension, cancer, diabetes and gout. They also advise against use for pregnant or breastfeeding women, infants, children, adolescents or elderly people.